FireMap

FireMap is a refinement on the typical "heatmap" to help better visualize mouse position data through Inverse Distance Weighting. I created a companion website to display various FireMap example outputs along with some additional detail you can check out here: https://firemap.netlify.com/

Compared to heatmap.js and other heatmap libraries there are two major differences. FireMap uses a standardized GIS algorithm compared to heatmap.js and others that use a density equation of some sort? This was the primary reason for creating FireMap since I thought it would be advantageous to employ a deterministic algorithm. Secondly, due to the calculation intensive nature of FireMap it's not intended to be used in real-time, although, it does have said capability.

Install

You can install FireMap either through npm:

   npm install --save-dev firemap

Alternatively, you can manually download FireMap through the Github repository here: github.com/artisin/firemap/dist/

Initialize

The FireMap class instance is exported through: export default;

ECMAScript 6 Module Syntax

import FireMap from 'firemap';

CommonJS Syntax

const FireMap = require('firemap').default;

Create a New Instance

FireMap is a Class, and as such, you must initialize it. The FireMap constructor accepts an option object argument to set the initial/default options.

// option-less
const firemap = new FireMap();
 
// options
const firemap = new FireMap({
  // if no canvas element is passed it defauls to the
  // first getElementsByTagName('canvas')
  canvas: document.getElementById('my-canvas-element'),
  // changes sampling DOM area
  area: 10
});

Data Structure

Typically you'll use FireMap in a post-event fashion using tracking data you've collected. However, you can draw a semi-real-time heatmap using the realTime method. There are two data types, dataPoints (mousemove) and clickPoints (pointerdown) that are either passed to the initial Class constructor or the draw method.

dataPoints → Mouse Position Data

firemap.draw({
  dataPoints: [{ x: 10, y: 15, value: 5}, ...]
})

clickPoints → Mouse Click Data

firemap.draw({
  clickPoints: [{ x: 20, y: 150}, ...]
})

Both

firemap.draw({
  dataPoints: [{ x: 10, y: 15, value: 5}, ...],
  clickPoints: [{ x: 20, y: 150}, ...]
})

Class Methods

Class Instance → constructor(options = {})

Creates a FireMap instance — many of these options can also be passed to the draw method.

• options.dataPoints = {arr} → user data points for mouse (mousemove)
• options.clickPoints = {arr} → user data points for clicks (pointerdown)
• options.area = {num} → sampling area that clusters all points within its area into a single cluster default is 10 so 10px by 10px sample area
• options.canvas = {dom} → canvas dom element to draw map on
• options.cleanEdges = {bln} → cleans edges of polygon to remove rough edges to make it look pretty, only used if corners is false
• options.clickColor = {str} → color of the click point data stars
• options.clickSize = {num} → size of the click point data stars
• options.corners = {num} → creates pseudo data points for corner of the window so heatmap spans the entire screen
• options.height = {num} → height of canvas || screen height
• options.hue = {num} → color hue for map default is 0.5 green, 0.8 violet, 3.5 rgbiv and no non-point color
• options.interval = {num} → interpolation interval of unknown points, the lower the number the more points calculated - computation time increase by O(n2) where n is the number of data points
• options.limit = {num} → search neighborhood limit, higher number the smoother blend of map colors - has a minor increase in computation time
• options.maxValue = {num} → used for color, and the default is 100, so any value above 100 is going to be the same color
• options.mesh = {bln} → to create a mesh-like map rather then a solid map
• options.opacity = {num} → opacity of canvus fill
• options.points = {bln} → to draw data marker point coordinates
• options.pointSize = {num} → font-size of points in px
• options.styles = {obj} → custom CSS canvas styles
• options.subscribe = {fnc} → a subscribe function that is invoked on the mouse tracking & click event, passes the event and binded to this
• options.threshold = {num} → point label value threshold, if a values does not meet threshold no point label will be generated
• options.throttle = {num} → mouse tracker throttle
• options.width = {num} → width of canvas, defaults to current screen width

Draws/create Map → draw(options = {})

Draws/creates a heatmap for the canvas element using either passed in dataPoints or real-time data points through the invocation of the draw method or automatically through the realTime method.

IMPORTANT: In all likelihood you don’t want data sets of over 1000+ data points because the computation time is O(n2) where n is the number of data points. With 1000-1500 points with an interval of 8 it takes 20-40 seconds to compute 1000-1500 data points and if you want a high quality render with an interval of 4 there will be two times as many calculations. If you are using FireMap to gather data points you can reduce data points by increasing the area (recommended) or increasing the throttle.

Options These options can also be passed into the initial constructor.

• options.dataPoints = {arr} → user data points for mouse (mousemove)
• options.clickPoints= {arr} → user data points for clicks (pointerdown)
• options.clickSize = {num} → size of the click point data stars
• options.clickColor = {str} → color of the click point data stars
• options.cb = {fnc} → Callback function invoked upon completion and binded to instance with the first arg being the canvas context (ctx)
• options.hue = {num} → color hue for map default is 0.5 green, 0.8 violet, 3.5 rgbiv and no non-point color
• options.interval = {num} → interpolation interval of unknown points, the lower the number the more points calculated - computation time increase by O(n2) where n is the number of data poi
• options.limit = {num} → search neighborhood limit, higher num smoother blend of map colors
• options.mesh = {bln} → to create a mesh-like map rather then a solid map
• options.opacity = {num} → opacity of canvus fill
• options.points = {bln} → to draw data marker point coordinates
• options.pointSize = {num} → font-size of points
• options.threshold = {num} → point values has to be higher than threshold

Get/Format Data → getData()

The getData method converts the raw tracking data matrix into valid/formatted tracking data to be used by the draw method. However, you'll first need to initialize the tracking feature through the init method in order to generate said data to be formatted. The data is returned in an array that consists of objects {x: <num>, y: <num>, value: <num>}.

Initialize Mouse & Click Tracking → init(subscribe = fnc)

To use FireMaps built-in mouse position and click logging feature you need to invoke the init method. There're two primary ways to "log" this data to send to your server. You can dump the data via the getData method either on a leave event or poll event. Or you can subscribe to the raw event data through the subscribe function. If you choose the latter, you can pass a subscribe function to the init method or declare it via the option object in the class constructor. The subscribe function is binded to the instance so that you can access the internals through this. Additionally, the subscribe function is passed two arguments, the first is the raw event and the second is the type of event which will be a string of 'mousemove' or 'pointerdown'.

Real Time Drawing → realTime(drawInterval = 10)

FireMap can also draw in real-time, but unlike heatmap.js, FireMap is not intended to draw in real time. The drawInterval determines how often the map should re-draw and the default is set at 10, so that it re-draws every 10 new data points.