I'm building a Rails app and would like to visualize the size of a users folders based on how many files are inside of them. I'm considering giving D3.js a try, but am not sure if I can have it dynamically update as files are added to each folder. I'd like to be able to input my JSON data (which is something D3 does do).<p>Unless D3.js is the best choice, any other good alternatives?
d3.js hands down. You absolutely can update in d3 stuff in real time, all you do is create a transition and re-bind the updated data. I've previously built the front end to a trading system that streams events to the browser and updates a d3 visualization over a websocket, and once you get your head around how d3 does things it's the perfect tool for this kind of thing.<p>Here's a tutorial that looks quite good:
<a href="http://blog.visual.ly/creating-animations-and-transitions-with-d3-js/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.visual.ly/creating-animations-and-transitions-wi...</a>