Formatting Numbers and Other Data Types

Formatting numbers and other data types

There are 2 ways of formatting numbers in PlaidCloud. One way is to transform the values in the tables directly, and a second (more common way) is to format them on display so the values don't lose precision in the table and the user can see the values in a cleaner, more appropriate way.

When I display a value on a dashboard, how do I format it the way I want? The core way to display a value is through a chart object on a dashboard. Charts can be Tables, Big Numbers, Bar Charts, and so on. Each chart object may have a slightly different place or means to display the values. For example, in Tables, you can change the format for each column, and for a Big Number, you can change the format of the number.

To change the format, edit the chart and locate the D3 FORMAT or NUMBER FORMAT field. For a Big Number chart, click on the CUSTOMIZE tab, and you will see NUMBER FORMAT. For a Table, click on the CUSTOMIZE tab, select a number column (displayed with a #) in CUSTOMIZE COLUMN and you will see the D3 FORMAT field.

The default value is Adaptive formatting. This will adjust the format based on the values. But if you want to fix it to a format (i.e. $12.23 or 12,345,678), then you select the format you want from the dropdown or manually type a different value (if the field allows).

D3 Formatting - what is it?

D3 Formatting is a structured, formalized means to display data results in a particular format. For example, in certain situations you may wish to display a large value as 3B (3 billion), formatted as .3s in D3 format, or as 3,001,238,383, formatted as ,d. Another common example is the decision to represent dollar values with 2 decimal precision, or to round that to the nearest dollar $,d or $,.2f to show dollar sign, commas, 2 decimal precision, and a fixed point notation. For a deeper dive into D3, see the following site: GitHub D3

General D3 Format

The general structure of D3 is the following:

[​[fill]align][sign][symbol][0][width][,][.precision][~][type]

The fill can be any character (like a period, x or anything else). If you have a fill character, you then have an align character following it, which must be one of the following:

> - Right-aligned within the available space. (Default behavior). < - Left-aligned within the available space. ^ - Centered within the available space. = - like >, but with any sign and symbol to the left of any padding.

The sign can be: - - blank for zero or positive and a minus sign for negative. (Default behavior.) + - a plus sign for zero or positive and a minus sign for negative. ( - nothing for zero or positive and parentheses for negative. (space) - a space for zero or positive and a minus sign for negative.

The symbol can be: $ - apply currency symbol.

The zero (0) option enables zero-padding; this implicitly sets fill to 0 and align to =.

The width defines the minimum field width; if not specified, then the width will be determined by the content. For example, if you have 8, the width of the field will be 8 characters.

The comma (,) option enables the use commas as separators (i.e. for thousands).

Depending on the type, the precision can either indicate the number of digits that follow the decimal point (types f and %), or the number of significant digits (types ​, g, r, s and p). If the precision is not specified, it defaults to 6 for all types except (none), which defaults to 12.

The tilde ~ option trims insignificant trailing zeros across all format types. This is most commonly used in conjunction with types r, s and %.

types

Examples