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Vega-Lite VS JSON Server

Compare Vega-Lite VS JSON Server and see what are their differences

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Vega-Lite logo Vega-Lite

High-level grammar of interactive graphics

JSON Server logo JSON Server

Get a full fake REST API with zero coding in less than 30 seconds. For front-end developers who need a quick back-end for prototyping and mocking
  • Vega-Lite Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-21
  • JSON Server Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-01

Vega-Lite features and specs

  • Declarative Language
    Vega-Lite uses a high-level JSON syntax that simplifies the process of creating complex visualizations by allowing users to specify the visualization in terms of what they want to see rather than how to draw it.
  • Expressive Power
    It supports a wide range of visualizations, including bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, and more complex layered and faceted visualizations, making it suitable for many types of data visualization needs.
  • Interactivity
    Vega-Lite allows for the easy creation of interactive visualizations using selections, thereby enhancing user engagement and insight discovery.
  • Compatibility with Vega
    Visualizations created in Vega-Lite can be automatically compiled to Vega, allowing access to the more extensive feature set of Vega when needed.
  • Responsive Design
    Vega-Lite visualizations are designed to be responsive, adapting well to different screen sizes and resolutions.
  • Ease of Integration
    Being based on a JSON syntax, Vega-Lite visualizations can easily be integrated with web applications, making it a popular choice for adding interactive charts to websites.

Possible disadvantages of Vega-Lite

  • Complexity Limitations
    While Vega-Lite is powerful, it has limitations compared to programming libraries like D3.js when creating highly customized or complex visualizations.
  • Learning Curve
    Even though it simplifies the process compared to lower-level libraries, there is still a learning curve associated with understanding its syntax and the structure of its JSON specification.
  • Performance Constraints
    For very large datasets, performance might become an issue because the library may need to handle more data than it’s optimized for, potentially slowing down rendering times.
  • Limited Customization
    While Vega-Lite offers a good degree of customization, there are limits to how much you can customize visualizations compared to raw Vega or other visualization libraries.
  • Dependence on JSON
    Some users might find the JSON format limiting in terms of readability and maintainability, especially for very complex visualizations.

JSON Server features and specs

  • Ease of Setup
    JSON Server can be set up quickly with minimal configuration, making it ideal for prototyping and rapid development. It allows developers to have a fully functioning REST API within minutes.
  • RESTful API
    It provides a standard RESTful API out of the box, allowing developers to perform all CRUD operations. This is helpful for simulating a real-world server while testing client-side applications.
  • Customization
    JSON Server supports middlewares, routes, and custom rules, allowing developers to customize the behavior and structure of the API to better suit their needs.
  • Fakes Backend Data
    It's great for simulating backend responses without needing a real backend setup, useful in front-end development to test components and interactions.
  • Lightweight
    As a lightweight server, it requires fewer resources and is quite simple compared to setting up a full-fledged backend server.

Possible disadvantages of JSON Server

  • Not for Production
    JSON Server is designed for development and testing. It is not suitable for production use due to performance limits and lack of robust security features.
  • Limited Functionality
    While JSON Server is great for basic CRUD operations, it lacks advanced features like authentication, authorization, and complex querying.
  • Data Persistence
    Data is stored in a JSON file, and while this is convenient for testing, it is not suitable for applications that require persistent and scalable data storage.
  • In-memory Limitations
    Being an in-memory server, it may have issues with handling large datasets or complex data structures efficiently.
  • Manual Data Reset
    Any changes made to the JSON file while the server is running require manual resets or reloads to reflect in the API, which can be cumbersome during continuous development cycles.

Vega-Lite videos

Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics

JSON Server videos

Angular CRUD with Web API Tutorial Part #3 - Setup Local JSON Server and Mock API Endpoints

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Vega-Lite and JSON Server)
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Data Visualization
100 100%
0% 0
API Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, JSON Server should be more popular than Vega-Lite. It has been mentiond 45 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Vega-Lite mentions (24)

  • Vega – A declarative language for interactive visualization designs
    - In our case some features were missing (and are still missing) - exponential average - that is most commonly used to smooth ML training curves. [1] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ [2] https://dvc.org/doc/user-guide/experiment-management/visualizing-plots#visualizing-plots. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Show HN: I made first declaritive SVG,canvas framework
    We use the slightly simpler vega-lite from the same group. It typically gets us 98% of the way there quite quickly. Its from the same team, just a more simple wrapper around D3. https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Ask HN: What's the best charting library for customer-facing dashboards?
    I like Vega-Lite: https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ It’s built by folks from the same lab as D3, but designed as “a higher-level visual specification language on top of D3” [https://vega.github.io/vega/about/vega-and-d3/] My favorite way to prototype a dashboard is to use Streamlit to lay things out and serve it and then use Altair [https://altair-viz.github.io/] to generate the Vega-Lite plots in Python. Then if... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Gnuplotlib: Non-Painful Plotting for NumPy
    I also have difficulties with Gnuplot and Matplotlib. I like Vega that allows me to create visualisations in a declarative way. If I really need something special I go with d3.js, which had a really steep learning curve but with ChatGPT it should have become easier for beginners. [1] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation
    To ensure you do not miss this: LiveBook comes with a Vega Lite integration (https://livebook.dev/integrations -> https://livebook.dev/integrations/vega-lite/), which means you get access to a lot of visualisations out of the box, should you need that (https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/). In the same "standing on giant's shoulders" stance, you can use Explorer (see example LiveBook at... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
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JSON Server mentions (45)

  • Building a CRUD app with React Query, TypeScript, and Axios
    We'll be using json-server to create the REST API that we'll fetch data from. In the root of the project, create a db.json file with the contents. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Full Stack To Do list, a step-by-step tutorial
    Our backend will be little more than a two-way translation layer between the database and the user interface (UI). Later in this post we will identify other responsibilities of a backend but our implementation will be kept simple to demonstrate the fundamental machinery and concepts. It is worth noting the backend comes in two parts, web server and application server. Both json-server and Express are able to... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Improve Frontend-Backend development harmony with JSON-Server
    JSON-Server creates fake REST API with a minimum amount of configuration, it provides a simple way to create mock RESTful APIs and easily define the required endpoints, allows easy definition of the data schema in a JSON file and can serve as a reference for each figure in the project. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Dictionary app
    I thought about usingJson Server (hosting the repo with the words on Github to begin with), Googlesheets, or maybe Firestore (i would prefer not to use it ,to avoid extra costs just in case it gets a reasonable amount of users). It isnt a big app so I just want a simple solution for storing the words and fetching them. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Playwright - Not just for Frontend
    First, I didn't create a backend API for this example, but I used a fake API to test. I created it with json-server and json-server-auth. They are two npm packages that use a JSON file as a database and expose the database in an API. You can find more about json-server in its documentation and about json-server-auth here. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Vega-Lite and JSON Server, you can also consider the following products

Observable - Interactive code examples/posts

JSON Placeholder - JSON Placeholder is a modern platform that provides you online REST API, which you can instantly use whenever you need any fake data.

Vega Visualization Grammar - Visualization grammar for creating, saving, and sharing interactive visualization designs

mocki Fake JSON API - mocki Fake JSON API is an advanced platform that offers you to create API for personal use or testing purposes.

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

Mockae - The most flexible way to mock REST APIs with Lua code execution