Handling Mouse Events in Overlapping SVG Layers

Question

I am building a map visualization with d3.js. I am drawing filled polygons for both the US states and counties. The SVG layer for counties is under the layer for states. The sta

Answer 1

If you want to do something when you click a state, like changing the border style, or the opacity of the shape, you can use the fact that every county belongs to a state and just group the counties in states, capturing the 'click' event in the county, select the corresponding state element and change its visual attributes. A mockup of this strategy:

// Setup the visualization, assuming that you have a div with id 'chart'
var width = 300,
    height = 300,
    div = d3.select('#chart'),
    svg = div.append('svg')
        .attr('width', width)
        .attr('height', height);

// Array of states, each one containing one or more counties. In this example,
// the states are rectangles, but you get the idea
var states = [
    {
        width: 300,
        height: 300,
        name: 'Fake State',
        counties: [
            {x:   5, y: 5, width:  95, height: 290, fill: '#b4a0a0'},
            {x: 100, y: 5, width: 150, height: 290, fill: '#b4c0a0'},
            {x: 250, y: 5, width:  45, height: 290, fill: '#a4a0c0'}
        ]
    }];

// Create a group for each state, with class state
var gstates = svg.selectAll('g.state')
    .data(states)
    .enter()
    .append('g')
    .classed('state', true);

// Add the state background, in this case, a transparent rectangle
gstates
    .append('rect')
    .classed('state', true)
    .attr('width', function(d) { return d.width; })
    .attr('height', function(d) { return d.height; })
    .attr('fill', '#444')
    .attr('fill-opacity', 0.0);

// For each group, add rectangles for each county, binding them to the
// county array of each state.
gstates.selectAll('rect.county')
    .data(function(d) { return d.counties; })
    .enter()
    .append('rect')
    .classed('county', true)
        .attr('x', function(d) { return d.x; })
        .attr('y', function(d) { return d.y; })
        .attr('width', function(d) { return d.width; })
        .attr('height', function(d) { return d.height; })
        .attr('fill', function(d) { return d.fill; })
        .on('mouseover', function() {
            d3.select(this).attr('fill-opacity', 0.5);
        })
        .on('mouseout', function() {
            d3.select(this).attr('fill-opacity', 0.9);
        })
        .on('click', function() {
            // Retrive the parent group of each county, and then select
            // the shape corresponding to the state and alter its properties
            // you can also access the state data
            var parent = d3.select(d3.select(this).node().parentNode),
                state = parent.select('rect.state');
                // Output 'Fake State'
                console.log(parent[0][0].__data__.name);
                state.attr('fill-opacity', 1.0);
        });

There is a working fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/pnavarrc/PGTCM/5/. Regards,