Getting started

Welcome! This tutorial will guide your first steps with Observable Framework by way of a hands-on exercise creating a dashboard of local weather. 🌦️

Framework is three things in one:

• a local development server that you use to preview projects locally during development, with instant updates as you save changes,
• a static site generator that compiles Markdown, JavaScript, and other sources and assets — alongside data snapshots generated by loaders — into a static site that you can host anywhere, and
• a command-line interface for automating builds & deploys so that you can quickly and securely share your site with whomever you like (your boss, your team, the world).

We’ll touch on each of these parts in this tutorial. It’ll go something like this:

First you’ll setup your local development environment by creating a project. Next you’ll develop: an iterative process where you save changes to source files in your editor while previewing the result in your browser. When you’re ready to share, it’s time to publish: you can either build a static site for self-hosting or deploy directly to Observable. Lastly, you can invite people to view your project!

These are just first steps. You can continue to develop projects after publishing, and republish as needed. You can also setup continuous deployment to publish your site automatically on commit or on schedule. We’ll cover these next steps briefly below.

1. Create

Framework includes a helper script (observable create) for creating new projects. After a few quick prompts — where to create the project, your preferred package manager, etc. — it will stamp out a fresh project from a template.

To create a new project with npm, run:

npm init "@observablehq"

If you prefer Yarn, run:

yarn create "@observablehq"

You can run the above command anywhere, but you may want to cd to your ~/Development directory first (or wherever you do local development).

This command will ask you a series of questions in order to initialize your new project. For this tutorial, you can simply hit Enter to accept the default values. When you’re done, you should see something like this:

┌   observable create 
│
◆  Welcome to Observable Framework! 👋 This command will help you create a new
│  project. When prompted, you can press Enter to accept the default value.
│
│  Want help? https://observablehq.com/framework/getting-started
│
◇  Where should we create your project?
│  ./hello-framework
│
◇  What should we title your project?
│  Hello Framework
│
◇  Include sample files to help you get started?
│  Yes, include sample files
│
◇  Install dependencies?
│  Yes, via yarn
│
◇  Initialize a git repository?
│  Yes
│
◇  Installed! 🎉
│
◇  Next steps… ──────────╮
│                        │
│  cd hello-framework    │
│  yarn dev              │
│                        │
├────────────────────────╯
│
└  Problems? https://github.com/observablehq/framework/discussions

And that’s it! Your new project is ready to go. 🎉

2. Develop

Next, cd into your new project folder.

cd hello-framework

Framework’s local development server lets you preview your site in the browser as you make rapid changes. The preview server generates pages on the fly: as you edit files in your editor, changes are instantly streamed to your browser.

To start the preview server using npm:

npm run dev

Or with Yarn:

yarn dev

You should see something like this:

Observable Framework v1.7.0
↳ http://127.0.0.1:3000/

Now visit http://127.0.0.1:3000 in your browser, which should look like:

Test live preview

Live preview means that as you save changes, your in-browser preview updates instantly. Live preview applies to Markdown pages, imported JavaScript modules (so-called hot module replacement), data loaders, and file attachments. This feature is implemented by the preview server watching files and pushing changes to the browser over a socket.

To experience live preview, open src/index.md in your preferred text editor — below we show Visual Studio Code — and position your browser window so that you can see your editor and browser side-by-side. If you then replace the text “Hello, Observable Framework” with “Hi, Mom!” and save, you should see:

Create a new page

Now let’s add a page for our weather dashboard. Create a new file src/weather.md and paste in the following snippet:

# Weather report

```js
display(1 + 2);
```

To see the new page in the sidebar, reload the page.

If you click on the Weather report link in the sidebar, it’ll take you to http://127.0.0.1:3000/weather, where you should see:

As evidenced by the code 1 + 2 rendered as 3, JavaScript fenced code blocks (```js) are live: the code runs in the browser. Try replacing 2 with Math.random(), and the code will re-run automatically on save. In a bit, we’ll write code to render a chart. We can also use code to debug as we develop, say to inspect data.

Data loader

Next, let’s load some data. The National Weather Service (NWS) provides an excellent and free API for local weather data within the United States. We’ll use the /points/{latitude},{longitude} endpoint to get metadata for the closest grid point to the given location, and then fetch the corresponding hourly forecast.

Create a new file src/data/forecast.json.js and paste in the following snippet:

const longitude = ;
const latitude = ;

async function json(url) {
  const response = await fetch(url);
  if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`fetch failed: ${response.status}`);
  return await response.json();
}

const station = await json(`https://api.weather.gov/points/${latitude},${longitude}`);
const forecast = await json(station.properties.forecastHourly);

process.stdout.write(JSON.stringify(forecast));

To personalize this code snippet to your current location, edit the longitude and latitude values above, or click the Locate me button above.

Your data loader should look like this:

If you like, you can run your data loader manually in the terminal:

node src/data/forecast.json.js

If this barfs a bunch of JSON in the terminal, it’s working as intended. 😅 Normally you don’t run data loaders by hand — Framework runs them automatically, as needed — but data loaders are “just” programs so you can run them manually if you want. Conversely, any executable or shell script that runs on your machine and outputs something to stdout can be a data loader!

File attachments

Framework uses file-based routing for data loaders: the data loader forecast.json.js serves the file forecast.json. To load this file from src/weather.md we use the relative path ./data/forecast.json. In effect, data loaders are simply a naming convention for generating “static” files — a big advantage of which is that you can edit a data loader and the changes immediately propagate to the live preview without needing a reload.

To load a file in JavaScript, use the built-in FileAttachment. In weather.md, replace the contents of the JavaScript code block (the parts inside the triple backticks ```) with the following code:

const forecast = FileAttachment("./data/forecast.json").json();

You can now reference the variable forecast from other code. For example, you can add another code block that displays the forecast data.

```js
display(forecast);
```

This looks like:

The built-in display function displays the specified value, a bit like console.log in the browser’s console. As you can see below, display is called implicitly when a code block contains an expression:

1 + 2

For convenience, here’s a copy of the data so you can explore it here:

This is a GeoJSON Feature object of a Polygon geometry representing the grid square. The properties object within contains the hourly forecast data. You can display it on a map with Leaflet, if you like.

Plots

Now let’s add a chart using Observable Plot. Framework includes a variety of recommended libraries by default, including Plot, and you can always import more from npm. Replace the display(forecast) code block with the following code:

display(
  Plot.plot({
    title: "Hourly temperature forecast",
    x: {type: "utc", ticks: "day", label: null},
    y: {grid: true, inset: 10, label: "Degrees (F)"},
    marks: [
      Plot.lineY(forecast.properties.periods, {
        x: "startTime",
        y: "temperature",
        z: null, // varying color, not series
        stroke: "temperature",
        curve: "step-after"
      })
    ]
  })
);

You should now see:

const longitude = -77.04;
const latitude = 38.90;

As before, the code block contains an expression (a call to Plot.plot) and hence display is called implicitly. And since this expression evaluates to a DOM element (a <figure> containing an <svg>), display inserts the element directly into the page. We didn’t have to touch the DOM API!

Components

As pages grow, complex inline JavaScript may become unwieldy and repetitive. Tidy code by moving it into functions. In Framework, a function that returns a DOM element is called a component.

To turn the chart above into a component, wrap it in a function and promote the data to a required argument. Accept any named options (such as width) as an optional second argument with destructuring.

function temperaturePlot(data, {width} = {}) {
  return Plot.plot({
    title: "Hourly temperature forecast",
    width,
    x: {type: "utc", ticks: "day", label: null},
    y: {grid: true, inset: 10, label: "Degrees (F)"},
    marks: [
      Plot.lineY(data.properties.periods, {
        x: "startTime",
        y: "temperature",
        z: null, // varying color, not series
        stroke: "temperature",
        curve: "step-after"
      })
    ]
  });
}

Now you can call temperaturePlot to display the forecast anywhere on the page:

display(temperaturePlot(forecast));

Layout

Let’s put some finishing touches on and wrap up this tutorial.

While this nascent dashboard only has a single chart on it, most dashboards will have many charts, tables, values, and other elements. To assist layout, Framework includes simple grid and card CSS classes with 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns. (You can write more elaborate custom styles if needed, or load your preferred CSS framework.)

For example, here’s a two-column grid with three cards:

<div class="grid grid-cols-2">
  <div class="card grid-colspan-2">one–two</div>
  <div class="card">three</div>
  <div class="card">four</div>
</div>

When placing charts in a grid, you typically want to render responsively based on the width (and sometimes height) of the containing cell. Framework’s resize helper takes a render function returning a DOM element and re-renders whenever the container resizes. It looks like this:

<div class="grid grid-cols-1">
  <div class="card">${resize((width) => temperaturePlot(forecast, {width}))}</div>
</div>

Lastly, let’s apply the dashboard theme and disable the table of contents (toc) using YAML front matter. The dashboard theme allows the main column to span the full width of the window; without it, the main column width is limited to 1152px as appropriate for documentation or a report.

---
theme: dashboard
toc: false
---

Ta-da! 🎉 Perhaps not the most exciting dashboard yet, but it has potential! Try exploring other data in the NWS forecast and adding more charts. For example, you could visualize precipitation probability.

3. Publish

When you’re ready to share your project — either privately or publicly — you can quickly deploy it to Observable using the deploy command:

npm run deploy

Or with Yarn:

yarn deploy

This command will ask you a few questions to configure your deploy, including which Observable workspace to use and whether the project should be public or private. You can also enter an optional message to associate with the deploy, but for now feel free to leave this blank by hitting Enter.

When deploy completes, Framework will show your project’s URL on observablehq.cloud, like below. From there you can invite people to your private workspace to see your project, or make your project public so anyone can see it.

┌   observable deploy 
│
●  To configure deploy, we need to ask you a few questions.
│
◇  Which Observable workspace do you want to use?
│  Example Inc. (@example)
│
◇  Which project do you want to use?
│  Create a new project
│
◇  What slug do you want to use?
│  hello-framework
│
◇  Who is allowed to access your project?
│  Private
│
◇  What changed in this deploy?
│  Enter a deploy message (optional)
│
◇  18 uploaded
│
◇  Deploy complete
│
└  Deployed project now visible at https://example.observablehq.cloud/hello-framework/

Self hosting

Of course, you don’t have to deploy to Observable — Framework projects are simply static sites, so you can host them anywhere!

To build your static site with npm, run:

npm run build

Or with Yarn:

yarn build

The build command generates the dist directory; you can then copy this directory to your static site server or preferred hosting service. To preview your built site locally, you can use a local static HTTP server such as http-server:

npx http-server dist

Next steps

Here are a few more tips.

Write a data loader in Python, R, or other language

We coded exclusively in JavaScript for this tutorial, but you can write data loaders in any language — not just JavaScript. Here’s a forecast.json.py you could use in place of the JavaScript data loader above:

import json
import requests
import sys

longitude = -122.47
latitude = 37.80

station = requests.get(f"https://api.weather.gov/points/{latitude},{longitude}").json()
forecast = requests.get(station["properties"]["forecastHourly"]).json()

json.dump(forecast, sys.stdout)

To write the data loader in R, name it forecast.json.R. Or as shell script, forecast.json.sh. You get the idea. See Data loaders: Routing for more. The beauty of this approach is that you can leverage the strengths (and libraries) of multiple languages, and still get instant updates in the browser as you develop.

Deploying automatically

You can schedule builds and deploy your project automatically on commit, or on a schedule. See deploying for more details.

Ask for help, or share your feedback

Please reach out if you have questions or thoughts! You can post on the Observable forum, start a GitHub discussion, or file a GitHub issue. And if you like Framework, please give us a star ⭐️ on GitHub — we appreciate your support. 🙏