Vega-Lite Specification

Vega-Lite Specifications

At its core, Vega-Lite specifications are JSON objects that describe visualizations as mappings from data to properties of graphical marks (e.g., points or bars). By simply providing a mark type and a mapping, Vega-Lite automatically produces other visualization components including axes, legends, and scales. Unless explicitly specified, Vega-Lite determines properties of these components based on a set of carefully designed rules. This approach allows Vega-Lite specifications to be succinct and expressive, but also provide user control.

As it is designed for analysis, Vega-Lite also supports data transformation such as aggregation, binning, time unit conversion, filtering, and sorting. In addition, it also supports faceting a single plot into trellis plots or small multiples.

{
  "description": ... ,
  "data": ... ,
  "mark": ... ,
  "transform": ...,
  "encoding": {
    "x": {
      "field": ...,
      "type": ...,
      ...
    },
    "y": ...,
    "color": ...,
    ...
  },
  "config": ...
}

In Vega-Lite, a specification can have the following top-level properties.