Oz
A Clojure library for creating interactive data visualizations and scientific documents using Vega and Vega-Lite.
What is Oz?
Oz is a Clojure library that provides tools for creating interactive data visualizations and scientific documents using Vega and Vega-Lite. It solves the problem of integrating declarative visualization grammars into Clojure workflows, enabling seamless visualization from the REPL, in web applications, notebooks, and static sites.
Clojure developers and data scientists who need to create, share, and embed interactive visualizations in REPL environments, web apps, or static documents.
Oz offers a unified Clojure interface to Vega/Vega-Lite with features like live reloading, hiccup embedding, and static site generation, making it easier to build and share reproducible, interactive visualizations within the Clojure ecosystem.
Overview
Data visualizations in Clojure and ClojureScript using Vega and Vega-lite
Use Cases
Best For
- Creating interactive data visualizations directly from a Clojure REPL
- Embedding Vega/Vega-Lite charts in ClojureScript web applications using Reagent
- Building static websites with embedded visualizations from markdown and hiccup
- Developing data science workflows with live code reloading and immediate visual feedback
- Sharing visualizations via GitHub gists and live editors like Vega Editor
- Using Vega/Vega-Lite in Jupyter notebooks with Clojupyter or IClojure kernels
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring real-time data streaming or continuous updates without manual reloading, as Oz focuses on static or REPL-driven visualizations.
- Teams not using Clojure or ClojureScript, since Oz is deeply integrated with these languages and their toolchains.
- Applications needing highly custom or 3D visualizations beyond the declarative grammar of Vega and Vega-Lite.
- Environments where minimal JavaScript dependencies are critical, as Oz relies on client-side Vega rendering and may increase bundle size.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Enables immediate visual feedback by pushing Vega/Vega-Lite specs directly to a browser from the Clojure REPL using `view!`, streamlining data exploration.
Allows combining visualizations with HTML markup using Clojure's hiccup syntax, as shown in examples for flexible document layouts and dashboards.
Provides `build!` to generate static websites from markdown and Vega files with live reloading, making it easy to create and edit content dynamically.
Offers Figwheel-like hot reloading with `live-reload!`, which re-evaluates code from the first changed form, optimized for data science workflows.
Cons
Requires starting a server with `oz/start-server!` and managing CLJS builds with Shadow-CLJS, which can be daunting for newcomers and adds overhead.
Jupyter integration depends on specific kernels like Clojupyter, and the README notes it's sensitive to version/environment details, often requiring Docker for reliability.
Visualizations are limited to Vega/Vega-Lite's capabilities, and updating versions may be necessary for new features, as admitted in the debugging section.
Frequently Asked Questions
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