Data Classes

⚠️ 2.0 contains breaking changes

If you are upgrading from 1.x, read Migrating from 1.x before you bump the version. Some of the breaks are caught by the compiler; several others change behavior silently and will not raise any error at all.

The three most likely to bite you:

1. tabularDataToCSV() no longer returns a data: URI. It returns CSV text. If you were assigning it to a link's href, that link is now broken — and nothing will tell you. Switch to tabularDataToCSVDataURI().
2. No factory throws any more. A try/catch around SearchData.createFromJSON will never fire; a malformed payload now comes back with isValid === false. Code that relied on the throw will carry on with an empty result.
3. TabularData.createFromJSON() is gone, replaced by the standalone createDataClass().

Plain JavaScript consumers should read the migration notes especially carefully: several breaks that TypeScript catches at compile time surface in JavaScript only as undefined at runtime.

Overview

The data classes in src/tse-data-classes.ts wrap the ThoughtSpot payloads so you can treat every payload as tabular data with column metadata, normalized rows, and helper methods to inspect the data.

There are two shapes of result:

• TabularData — a single table. It keeps the original payload, lets you set and look up column names (with case-insensitive matching), exposes row/column counts, and provides getDataAsTable(), getDataAsObjects(), populateDataByRow(), and populateDataByColumn() so downstream UI code can treat every payload the same way.
• VizCollectionData — a collection of visualizations, each of which is a TabularData. Liveboard payloads use this, because a liveboard has no single table of its own.

Both derive from PayloadData, which retains the original payload and records anything that went wrong while normalizing it.

Tested Versions

These classes have been tested against ThoughtSpot 10.15.

Installation

npm install tse-data-classes

The package ships both ESM and CommonJS builds with TypeScript declarations, so import and require both work:

import { TabularData, ActionData } from "tse-data-classes";
// or
const { TabularData, ActionData } = require("tse-data-classes");

Without npm or TypeScript

If you are not using npm — a static page, a <script> tag, an embed dropped into an existing app — downloads/ holds prebuilt single-file versions with no dependencies and nothing to install:

<script src="tse-data-classes.js"></script>
<script>
  const data = TSEDataClasses.createDataClass(payload);
</script>

There is a UMD build (script tag, require(), or AMD), an ES module build, and a .d.ts you can drop beside them for editor completion in plain JavaScript. See downloads/README.md for the details and the CDN URLs. The API is identical to the npm package, so everything below applies unchanged.

Development

npm install
npm run verify   # typecheck, tests with coverage, then build

Individual scripts:

Script	What it does
npm run build	Emits the CommonJS and ESM builds plus .d.ts declarations into dist/, then refreshes downloads/
npm run build:downloads	Rebuilds only the single-file bundles in downloads/ from the current dist/esm output
npm run typecheck	Typechecks src and tests without emitting
npm test	Runs the test suite
npm run test:watch	Runs the tests in watch mode
npm run test:coverage	Runs the tests and enforces the coverage thresholds
npm run verify	Typecheck, coverage, and build — what prepublishOnly runs

Reading a Result

Every factory returns an object that reports what happened during parsing, so an empty result can be told apart from a failed one. A malformed payload does not throw — it comes back with the problem recorded:

⚠️ Breaking change from 1.x. In 1.x, SearchData.createFromJSON threw on a malformed payload while every other factory logged the problem and returned a half-populated object. Now none of them throw. Any try/catch you had around a factory call is dead code, and the failure it used to handle now passes through as a valid-looking but empty result. Replace the catch with an isValid check.

const data = ActionData.createFromJSON(payload);

if (!data.isValid) {
  console.error("Could not read the payload:", data.errors);
  return;
}

if (data.warnings.length) {
  // Non-fatal adjustments, e.g. a duplicate column renamed or a short row padded.
  console.warn(data.warnings);
}

const rows = data.getDataAsObjects();

• isValid — false when the data is incomplete or missing.
• errors — why the data is incomplete or missing.
• warnings — adjustments made to keep the data usable.
• originalData — the untouched payload, for anything the classes do not model.

Errors are also logged to the console. Only the payload's top-level key names are logged, never its values, so customer data is never written to the log.

Using the Factory Methods

Generic Factory (Recommended)

If you don't know which payload type you're receiving, use createDataClass. It detects the payload structure and returns the appropriate data class instance:

⚠️ Breaking change from 1.x. This replaces TabularData.createFromJSON(payload, typeHint), which no longer exists. The static shared its name with every subclass's own createFromJSON, which made ActionData.createFromJSON(payload, someHint) typecheck while silently ignoring the hint. A standalone function removes the collision.

import { createDataClass, isTabularData } from "tse-data-classes";

const data = createDataClass(payload);

if (isTabularData(data)) {
  const rows = data.getDataAsObjects();
} else {
  // A liveboard payload: a collection of visualizations.
  for (const vizId of data.vizIds) {
    console.log(vizId, data.getViz(vizId).getDataAsObjects());
  }
}

createDataClass throws only when the payload matches no known shape. A recognized payload that fails to parse comes back with isValid === false instead.

Passing a type hint skips detection and narrows the return type, so you don't need a cast:

import { createDataClass, DataClassType } from "tse-data-classes";

const spotterData = createDataClass(payload, DataClassType.SpotterData); // typed SpotterData

The DataClassType enum includes: ActionData, ContextActionData, VizPointClickData, LiveboardActionData, LiveboardData, SearchData, AnswerData, and SpotterData.

Use detectDataClassType(payload) if you want the detected type without parsing. It returns null for an unrecognized payload.

Spotter payloads. A Spotter response is structurally identical to an action payload, so detection cannot tell them apart and resolves that shape to ActionData, which parses a superset of it. Pass DataClassType.SpotterData explicitly when you specifically need a SpotterData instance.

Type-Specific Factories

Alternatively, call the factory that corresponds to the payload you receive. The factories read the embedded column metadata, reorder the values to match the column names, and populate the base class so you can immediately use the API below.

const actionData = ActionData.createFromJSON(payload);
const rows = actionData.getDataAsTable();

The classes and their typical sources are:

• ActionData.createFromJSON(payload) — menu actions on answers (including visualizations in liveboards) or EventType.Data. Use this for primary actions that return embedded answer data. Reads the payload whether embedAnswerData sits at the root or under data.
• ContextActionData.createFromJSON(payload) — context menu actions or clicks on selected points. Each selected attribute/measure becomes a column. When nothing is selected, it falls back to the point under the cursor.
• VizPointClickData.createFromJSON(payload) — visualization point click events. Stores the click metadata (vizId, clickType, status), the embedAnswerData payload, and the tabular columns describing the clicked/selected points.
• LiveboardActionData.createFromJSON(payload) — liveboard menu actions. Creates an empty VizData for every visualization container in the pinboard details; this payload carries no data for them.
• LiveboardData.createFromJSON(payload) — response from the liveboard data API. Each visualization becomes a VizData entry with its own columns and rows.
• SearchData.createFromJSON(payload) — search results (Search Data API and fetchAnswerData calls). Columns and rows come from contents[0].
• AnswerData.createFromJSON(payload) — payload.answerService.fetchData(...) calls. Functionally the same as SearchData but emitted in the answer API shape.
• SpotterData.createFromJSON(payload) — Spotter API responses.

TabularData Public API

• columnNames — the normalized column names, in payload order. Returns a copy.
• nbrColumns — how many columns were detected.
• nbrRows — how many rows are stored. Always matches the actual data.
• getOriginalColumnName(columnName) — case-insensitive lookup returning the stored casing, or undefined.
• hasColumn(columnName) — case-insensitive presence check.
• getDataAsTable(columnNames?) — the data as an array of positional rows.
• getDataAsObjects(columnNames?) — the data as an array of objects keyed by column name.
• data — the raw column store, keyed by column name. Treat it as read-only.

Both getDataAsTable and getDataAsObjects accept a single column name, an array of names, or nothing at all (meaning every column). Names are matched case-insensitively, and the columns come back in the order you asked for:

const actionData = ActionData.createFromJSON(payload);

console.log("Columns:", actionData.columnNames);
console.log("Row count:", actionData.nbrRows);

if (actionData.hasColumn("Status")) {
  // getDataAsObjects gives you rows keyed by name.
  const [firstRow] = actionData.getDataAsObjects();
  console.log("First status value:", firstRow["Status"]);

  // getDataAsTable gives you positional rows, in the order requested.
  const [statuses] = actionData.getDataAsTable("Status");
  console.log("First status value:", statuses[0]);
}

The result of getDataAsTable is always rectangular with exactly nbrRows rows. A column name that does not exist yields a column of nulls and a recorded warning, so a typo can never silently drop or shift the surrounding data.

Column name collisions

Column names are compared case-insensitively throughout. A name that collides with one already present is given a numeric suffix, and the rename is recorded in warnings:

// A payload with columns ["Amount", "amount"] normalizes to:
data.columnNames; // ["Amount", "amount (2)"]

Without this, two columns sharing a display name would share one entry and their values would run together.

VizCollectionData Public API

LiveboardData and LiveboardActionData hold a collection of visualizations rather than a single table, so they do not have getDataAsTable() or nbrRows. Read the individual visualizations instead:

⚠️ Breaking change from 1.x. These two classes used to extend TabularData, which meant they inherited a table API that could only ever report empty: nbrRows was always 0, getDataAsTable() always returned [], and tabularDataToHTML() on a liveboard silently produced an empty table. They now extend VizCollectionData and those members are gone, so such a call is an error instead of a wrong answer. instanceof TabularData on a liveboard result is now false — use isVizCollectionData() or isTabularData() to branch.

• vizIds — the visualization IDs in the collection.
• nbrVisualizations — how many visualizations there are.
• getViz(vizId) — one visualization as a VizData (a TabularData), or undefined.
• vizData — the whole map, keyed by visualization ID.

const liveboard = LiveboardData.createFromJSON(payload);

for (const vizId of liveboard.vizIds) {
  const viz = liveboard.getViz(vizId);
  console.log(viz.vizName, viz.nbrRows, viz.getDataAsObjects());
}

Helper Methods

• sortObjects(array, attr, direction?) — sorts an array of objects in place by the attr key and returns the same array. direction is "asc" (default) or "desc". Numbers compare numerically, strings with localeCompare, and null/undefined/NaN always sort last in both directions so they never scatter through the results.
• tabularDataToHTML(tabularData) — renders any TabularData as an HTML table using the CSS classes tabular-data and tabular-data-th. All column names and values are HTML-escaped, because worksheet column names and cell values are user-authored and must not reach the DOM as markup.
• tabularDataToCSV(tabularData) — produces CSV text (CRLF line endings, per RFC 4180) with every field quoted and escaped.
• tabularDataToCSVDataURI(tabularData) — produces a percent-encoded data:text/csv URI for a download link.
• escapeHTML(value) — the escaping used by tabularDataToHTML, exported for building your own markup.
• isTabularData(data) / isVizCollectionData(data) — type guards for narrowing a createDataClass result.

const actionData = ActionData.createFromJSON(payload);

const csv = tabularDataToCSV(actionData); // write this to a file
const href = tabularDataToCSVDataURI(actionData); // or use this as a download link

⚠️ Breaking change from 1.x, and the easiest one to miss. tabularDataToCSV() used to return a string with a data:text/csv;charset=utf-8, prefix glued to the front. It now returns the CSV itself.

Nothing will warn you about this. Both versions return a string, so the compiler is happy and an href assignment still "works" — the link just no longer downloads anything useful. Search your code for every tabularDataToCSV call and decide which one you actually wanted:

// 1.x — a data URI, and a broken one: the body was never percent-encoded,
// so any #, %, or & in the data truncated or corrupted it.
link.href = tabularDataToCSV(data);

// 2.x — for a download link (properly encoded):
link.href = tabularDataToCSVDataURI(data);

// 2.x — for a file, a clipboard, or a POST body:
fs.writeFileSync("export.csv", tabularDataToCSV(data));

Two further changes to the CSV text itself, both of which can break a snapshot test or a strict downstream parser: rows now end with \r\n rather than \n, per RFC 4180, and formula-like values are prefixed with a quote (see below).

CSV safety

tabularDataToCSV prefixes any string value that starts with =, +, -, @, a tab, or a carriage return with a single quote, which forces Excel and Google Sheets to treat it as text. Without that, an exported cell such as =HYPERLINK(...) or @SUM(A1) executes when someone opens the file. Values that are simply numbers, including negative ones, are left untouched so numeric data stays clean.

⚠️ Behavior change from 1.x. 1.x escaped embedded quotes but passed formula-like values through verbatim. If your data legitimately contains strings starting with one of those characters and something downstream re-parses the CSV, it will now see a leading ' that was not there before.

HTML safety

tabularDataToHTML escapes &, <, >, ", and ' in every column name and every cell value.

⚠️ Security fix in 2.0 — treat 1.x output as untrusted. 1.x interpolated column names and values straight into the markup, so a worksheet column named <img src=x onerror=...> or a cell containing a <script> tag executed in whatever page rendered the table. If you shipped 1.x output into a page, that was a live XSS vector. If you were working around it with your own escaping pass over the returned HTML, remove it — escaping the output a second time will now render the entities visibly as text.

Migrating from 1.x

2.0 is a breaking release. The changes fall into two groups, and the second group is the one that needs your attention: those breaks produce no error of any kind, so the only way to find them is to look.

Suggested upgrade path

1. Bump the version and run your typechecker. That clears the whole first table below.
2. Grep for tabularDataToCSV, createFromJSON, viz_id, viz_name, and sortObjects. These are where the silent breaks concentrate.
3. Re-record any snapshot test that covers CSV or HTML output — the output of both has changed.
4. Add an isValid check wherever you previously relied on a factory throwing.

Breaks that fail loudly

TypeScript catches all of these at compile time. In plain JavaScript, the first three surface only as undefined or a TypeError at runtime, so check them by hand if you are not using TypeScript.

1.x	2.x	What to do
TabularData.createFromJSON(payload, hint?)	Removed	Call the standalone createDataClass(payload, hint?)
VizData.viz_id / viz_name	VizData.vizId / vizName	Rename. In JavaScript the old names now read undefined
LiveboardData / LiveboardActionData had getDataAsTable(), nbrRows, nbrColumns, columnNames	Removed; they extend VizCollectionData	Use vizIds and getViz(id), then read the table off the returned VizData
_cns, _nbrRows, _columnNameMap were public	protected	Use columnNames, nbrRows, and getOriginalColumnName(). Still reachable from JavaScript, but unsupported
Cell values were string | number	CellValue is string | number | null	Handle null, which marks a padded or missing cell
data_rows was typed [string, number][]	PayloadCellValue[][]	Nothing to do — the old type was wrong and rejected valid payloads
require("tse-data-classes/dist/index.js")	Fails with ERR_PACKAGE_PATH_NOT_EXPORTED	Output moved to dist/cjs/ and dist/esm/, and the exports map now allows only the package root. Import from "tse-data-classes"

Breaks that change behavior silently

No error, no warning, no type failure. Each of these compiles and runs, and simply does something different than it used to.

1.x behavior	2.x behavior	Why it matters
tabularDataToCSV() returned a data: URI	Returns CSV text	An href assignment still typechecks and still "works", but the link no longer downloads correctly. Use tabularDataToCSVDataURI()
SearchData.createFromJSON threw on a bad payload	Nothing throws	Your catch block is now unreachable and the bad payload passes through as an empty result. Check isValid
The other factories logged and returned a half-populated object	Same, but the problem is recorded	You can now tell an empty answer from a failed parse. Read errors and warnings
CSV rows ended with \n	\r\n, per RFC 4180	Breaks exact-match snapshot tests and strict line-based parsers
CSV passed formula-like values through verbatim	Values starting =, +, -, @, tab, or CR get a ' prefix	Security fix. Changes the exported text for affected values
HTML output was not escaped	All names and values are escaped	Security fix — 1.x output was an XSS vector. Remove any escaping pass you added yourself, or entities will render as visible text
A missing column in getDataAsTable() returned [] (if it was first) or undefined cells	Returns a full column of nulls and records a warning	Code that relied on the empty result, or on a truthiness check, now sees rows
Duplicate column names collapsed into one entry	The later one is renamed, e.g. Amount and amount (2)	A data["amount"] lookup for the second column now misses. Read columnNames to see the applied names
nbrRows could exceed the stored data after a ragged or failed parse	Always matches the data	A loop bounded by nbrRows no longer runs past the end — but the number itself may differ from 1.x
sortObjects() compared with < / > and returned void	Type-aware comparison; returns the array; takes a direction	Numbers and booleans order the same as before. Strings, mixed types, and null/undefined/NaN all order differently — see the table below
Auto-detection returned SpotterData for a data.embedAnswerData payload	Returns ActionData	instanceof SpotterData on an auto-detected result is now false. Pass DataClassType.SpotterData explicitly if you need that class
contents: [] threw "Unable to determine payload type"	Detected as LiveboardData or SearchData	An empty liveboard or result set is now parsed instead of throwing

sortObjects ordering, measured

1.x compared values with the bare < and > operators. That is correct for numbers, but it sorts strings by UTF-16 code unit (so every capital letter precedes every lowercase one), coerces mixed types, and cannot order null, undefined, or NaN consistently — NaN compares false against everything, which makes the comparator inconsistent and can scramble the array. Actual output for the same input:

Input	1.x	2.x
10, 9, 2	2, 9, 10	2, 9, 10	unchanged
true, false, true	false, true, true	false, true, true	unchanged
"10", "9", "2"	"10", "2", "9"	"10", "2", "9"	unchanged
"b", "A", "a", "Z"	"A", "Z", "a", "b"	"a", "A", "b", "Z"	changed
5, null, 1, undefined	null, 1, 5, undefined	1, 5, null, undefined	changed
NaN, 3, 1	NaN, 1, 3	1, 3, NaN	changed
2, "10"	2, "10"	"10", 2	changed

If you were sorting user-visible strings, the new locale ordering is almost certainly what you wanted. If you depended on the old code-unit ordering, sort on a pre-lowercased key instead.

Not breaking

These are additions, safe to ignore until you want them: getDataAsObjects(), detectDataClassType(), isTabularData(), isVizCollectionData(), escapeHTML(), tabularDataToCSVDataURI(), the isValid / errors / warnings accessors, the PayloadData and VizCollectionData base classes, per-hint return-type narrowing on createDataClass, and the ESM build.