We're thrilled to feature Ivan Shen in this edition of the Preswald Community Showcase! 🎉 Ivan has built an impressive Preswald app that analyzes and visualizes Pixar films data using interactive charts and tables.
🌟 Project Overview
📊 Preswald and Analytics
This blog explores how Preswald utilizes analytics to examine Pixar film trends, providing insights into box office performance, audience ratings, and production budgets through dynamic visualizations.
Project Name: Pixar Films Explorer Built by: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-blue-600 hover:text-blue-800 underline" href="https://github.com/ivanshen11">Ivan Shen</a> Dataset: Pixar films dataset
<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-blue-600 hover:text-blue-800 underline" href="https://github.com/ivanshen11/preswald/blob/main/examples/pixar_films/hello.py">Check out the project on GitHub</a>
📊 Description
Ivan's project provides an interactive dashboard for exploring Pixar films' performance. The app allows users to:
<li>**Filter films** by release year, box office revenue, and audience rating. </li><li>**Visualize trends** using **Plotly charts** to analyze revenue growth and critical reception. </li><li>**Compare production budgets** dynamically in an interactive table. </li><li>**Gain insights** into Pixar's most successful films and production patterns. </li>With Preswald, Ivan has created a seamless user experience, where users can dynamically adjust inputs and get instant updates without writing frontend code.
🚀 Code Snippets
Here’s a sneak peek at how Ivan's project is structured:
Loading the Data
from preswald import connect, get_df, text
connect() # Establish connection to data
# Load Pixar films dataset
pixar_df = get_df("pixar_films")
Creating an Interactive Revenue Trend Chart
from preswald import plotly
import plotly.express as px
fig = px.bar(pixar_df, x='release_year', y='box_office', color='film_title',
title='Pixar Box Office Revenue Over Time')
plotly(fig)
Displaying Pixar Film Data in a Table
from preswald import table
table(pixar_df[['film_title', 'release_year', 'box_office', 'audience_rating', 'budget']])
With just a few lines of Python, Ivan has built a fully interactive data app powered by Preswald! 🚀
What is Preswald?
Preswald is an open-source framework for building data apps, dashboards, and internal tools with just Python. It provides pre-built UI components like tables, charts, and forms, so you don't have to write frontend code. Users can interact with your app, changing inputs, running queries, and updating visualizations, without you needing to manage the UI manually.
Preswald tracks state and dependencies, making computations efficient by updating only when necessary. It uses a workflow DAG to manage execution order, ensuring performance and predictability. Preswald allows you to turn Python scripts into shareable, production-ready applications easily.
Key Features
<li>Add UI components to Python scripts: user-interactive buttons, text inputs, tables, and charts. </li><li>Stateful execution with automatic state tracking and updates. </li><li>Structured computation using a DAG-based execution model. </li><li>Deploy with a single command. </li><li>Query and display live data from various sources. </li><li>Build interactive reports and dashboards. </li><li>Easy local or cloud hosting. </li><li>Shareable via a simple link. </li>🚀 Getting Started
Installation
First, install Preswald via pip: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-blue-600 hover:text-blue-800 underline" href="https://pypi.org/project/preswald/">https://pypi.org/project/preswald/</a>
pip install preswald
👩💻 Quick Start
1. Initialize a New Project
To start using Preswald, initialize a new project:
preswald init my_project
cd my_project
This creates a folder <code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">my_project</code> with essential files:
<li><code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">hello.py</code>: Your first Preswald app. </li><li><code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">preswald.toml</code>: Settings for your app. </li><li><code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">secrets.toml</code>: Secure sensitive information. </li><li><code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">.gitignore</code>: Keep <code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">secrets.toml</code> safe from version control. </li>2. Write Your First App
Open <code class="rounded-md bg-gray-100 px-1.5 py-0.5 font-mono text-sm">hello.py</code> and write:
from preswald import text, plotly, connect, get_df, table
import pandas as pd
import plotly.express as px
text("# Welcome to Preswald!")
text("This is your first app. 🎉")
# Load CSV data
connect() # loads default sample CSV
df = get_df('sample_csv')
# Create a scatter plot
fig = px.scatter(df, x='quantity', y='value', text='item',
title='Quantity vs. Value')
fig.update_traces(textposition='top center')
fig.update_layout(template='plotly_white')
# Show plot and data
table(df)
3. Run Your App
Launch the app with:
preswald run
4. Deploy Your App to the Cloud
Deploy your app using:
preswald deploy --target structured
Your app will be built and accessible online.
Huge Thanks to Ivan Shen!
A big thank you to Ivan Shen for sharing their work and inspiring the Preswald community! Want to see more of their work? Check them out on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-blue-600 hover:text-blue-800 underline" href="https://github.com/ivanshen11">GitHub</a>.
Want to Contribute?
Got a cool idea for a Preswald app? We'd love to see it! Get started here: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-blue-600 hover:text-blue-800 underline" href="https://github.com/StructuredLabs/preswald">https://github.com/StructuredLabs/preswald</a> and get featured in our next Community Showcase.
Happy building! 🚀
