DEV Community

Cover image for Angular Dashboard Tutorial with Cube.js
Cube profile image Timur Minulin
Timur Minulin for Cube

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at cube.dev

Angular Dashboard Tutorial with Cube.js

#tutorials #javascript #opensource #webdev

Almost any website has some embedded analytics. You can find usage charts for every public Github repository or any social network today. Cube.js is designed to help developers build such analytical applications. It solves a plethora of different problems every production-ready analytic application needs to solve: analytic SQL generation, query results caching and execution orchestration, data pre-aggregation, security, and API for query results fetch.

We recently covered how to build an analytic dashboard with Cube.js and React, but what about Angular? Starting with version 0.8.4, the Cube.js Client ships with an Angular module for easy integration.
Today I will show you how to build an analytical dashboard using Angular, Cube.js, and ng2-charts.

You can find a final dashboard here and a CodeSandbox with the source code below.

Setting up a Cube.js Backend

We covered this topic in other tutorials, so if you already have your Cube.js backend set up and running, you can skip this section.

You can install Cube.js CLI, which is used for various Cube.js workflows, via NPM or Yarn.

npm install -g cubejs-cli
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Let's prepare a Cube.js Backend to serve data for the dashboard we're building. Cube.js supports many databases and deployment options. You can learn more about it in the documentation. For this tutorial, we’ll use a Postgres database and deploy Cube.js to Heroku. Let's create a new Cube.js application using the CLI we just installed.

cubejs new ng-demo -d postgres
cd ng-demo
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

In case you don't have a database for the dashboard yet, you can download our demo e-commerce dataset for Postgres.

curl http://cube.dev/downloads/ecom-dump.sql > ecom-dump.sql
createdb ecom
psql --dbname ecom -f ecom-dump.sql
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The next step is to define a data model. In a production application, you most likely will have multiple schema files, but for our demo app we are going to have only one cube. If you're not familiar with Cube.js data schema, there's an in-depth tutorial here.

cube(`Users`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM users`,

  measures: {
    count: {
      sql: `id`,
      type: `count`
    }
  },

  dimensions: {
    city: {
      sql: `city`,
      type: `string`
    },

    signedUp: {
      sql: `created_at`,
      type: `time`
    },

    companyName: {
      sql: `company_name`,
      type: `string`
    }
  }
});
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Cube.js uses data schema to generate and execute SQL in the connected database. We can test it out by sending a sample request to the Cube.js REST API endpoint.

curl \
 -H "Authorization: EXAMPLE-API-TOKEN" \
 -G \
 --data-urlencode 'query={"measures":["Users.count"]}' \
 http://localhost:4000/cubejs-api/v1/load
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can learn more about the Cube.js Query format here.

Finally, let’s deploy our backend to Heroku:

git init
git add -A
git commit -am "Initial commit"
heroku create cubejs-ngx-demo
git push heroku master
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can find full deployment guide in the documentation.

Dashboard

Now, when we have a functional backend running, we can move to the next part—building a dashboard. Cube.js has an Angular binding, which doesn’t provide any visualization itself, but is designed to work with any charting library. This way it provides great flexibility for developers to build unique and custom user experiences.

First, install ng-cli if you don't have it already:

npm install -g angular/cli
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Let's create a new Angular app using SCSS templates:

ng new ng-demo-dashboard -s scss
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We'll be using an ng2-charts library, which is an Angular wrapper for Chart.js, to draw charts. The Cube.js Angular Client will be used to load the data from the backend, and finally Bootstrap will provide us with some nice styling. Let’s add these dependencies:

npm install -s ng2-charts @cubejs-client/core @cubejs-client/ngx moment
# or
yarn add ng2-charts @cubejs-client/core @cubejs-client/ngx moment
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Next, add the required modules to the app.module.ts file:

const cubejsOptions = {
  token:
    "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.e30.K9PiJkjegbhnw4Ca5pPlkTmZihoOm42w8bja9Qs2qJg",
  options: {
    apiUrl: "https://react-query-builder.herokuapp.com/cubejs-api/v1"
  }
};

@NgModule({
  declarations: [AppComponent],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    ChartsModule,
    CubejsClientModule.forRoot(cubejsOptions)
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now we're finished with our app setup. Let's create a chart component:

ng generate component chart
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Add some style and an element for ng2-charts:

<div class="card">
  <div class="card-body">
    <h5 class="card-title">{{ title }}</h5>
    <div class="card-text">
      <div *ngIf="ready === false" class="d-flex justify-content-center text-dark">
        <div class="spinner-border" role="status">
      <span class="sr-only">Loading...</span>
    </div>
      </div>
      <canvas *ngIf="ready && showChart" baseChart height="300" [datasets]="chartData" [labels]="chartLabels" [options]="chartOptions"
             [colors]="chartColors" [chartType]="chartType"></canvas>
      <h1 *ngIf="ready && !showChart" height="300">{{ chartData }}</h1>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Let's get the data for our chart. We need to define the inputs, which we'll pass to the ngx-chart component to allow customization:

@Input() chartType;
@Input() query;
@Input() title;

public chartData;
public chartLabels;
public chartOptions: any = {
  responsive: true
};
public chartColors;
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To gather the data, we'll add an input for the query and use the Cube.js Angular watch API:

constructor(private cubejs: CubejsClient) {}

ngOnInit() {
  this.querySubject = new Subject();
  this.resultChanged = this.resultChanged.bind(this);
  this.cubejs
    .watch(this.querySubject)
    .subscribe(this.resultChanged, err => console.log("HTTP Error", err));

  this.querySubject.next(this.query);
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

This will allow us to get and display new data every time the query changes. Now let's create a simple dashboard in our app.component:

<div class="container-fluid">
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-sm-4">
      <app-chart chartType="singleValue" [query]="usersQuery" title="Total Users"></app-chart>
    </div>
    <div class="col-sm-4">
      <app-chart chartType="singleValue" [query]="ordersQuery" title="Total Orders"></app-chart>
    </div>
    <div class="col-sm-4">
      <app-chart chartType="singleValue" [query]="shippedOrdersQuery" title="Shipped Orders"></app-chart>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-sm-6">
      <app-chart chartType="line" [query]="lineChartQuery" title="New Users Over Time"></app-chart>
    </div>
    <div class="col-sm-6">
      <app-chart chartType="stackedBar" [query]="stackedBarChartQuery" title="Orders by Status Over time"></app-chart>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

And it's done! You can find the resulting dashboard here and a codesandbox demo here.

Top comments (0)

Read next

ayush7614 profile image

How to deploy Granite MOE 1B and 3B in the Cloud?

Ayush kumar -

paharihacker profile image

A Complete Guide to React useEffect vs useLayoutEffect for Beginners

Rajesh Dhiman -

abhishekjaiswal_4896 profile image

WebSocket: The Backbone of Real-Time Communication in Modern Web Applications

Abhishek Jaiswal -

devidev profile image

Vue3 + ESLint 9.13.0 + Prettier +TypeScript and VSCode Autoformat on Save

Visaka Devi Chaves -