How does Preset.io work + building a hierarchy table and interactive calendar chart?

[FrancescoCastaldi]

Hi Superset community,

I'm exploring Apache Superset and I have a few questions I hope you can help me with:

1. How does Preset.io work exactly?

I understand that Preset.io is a managed/cloud version of Apache Superset. But I'd love to understand more concretely:

• What does Preset add on top of open-source Superset?
• How does the versioning work ? are they always on the latest Superset release?
• Is there any vendor lock-in risk if I build dashboards on Preset and later want to move to self-hosted Superset?
• What's the pricing model (per-user, per-usage, etc.)?

2. Hierarchy / Matrix Table (like Power BI Matrix)

I need a table visualization that supports hierarchical rows ? similar to Power BI's matrix visual where you can have multiple levels of grouping in the first column that can be expanded/collapsed (drill down/up). For example:
Region (expandable) ??? Country ? ??? City ? ? ??? Store

I found discussion #30517 about this, but it wasn't fully addressed. Does Superset's Pivot Table v2 support this kind of hierarchical expand/collapse behavior? Are there any custom plugins or workarounds?

3. Interactive Calendar Chart / Calendar Heatmap

I also need an interactive calendar chart (like a calendar heatmap ? GitHub contribution graph style) where you can:

• See daily values in a monthly/yearly calendar grid
• Click on a day to filter/cross-filter other charts
• Navigate between months/years

I know there is @superset-ui/legacy-plugin-chart-calendar and there was a discussion about SIP-113 for improvements. What's the current status of this? Is there a more modern ECharts-based replacement being developed? And how would I go about building a custom interactive calendar chart plugin if none exists yet?

Any guidance, pointers to existing work, or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[dosubot[bot]]

Hey @FrancescoCastaldi, I can help with the Superset-specific questions (2 and 3). For question 1 about Preset.io's pricing, versioning, and vendor lock-in specifics, that's outside this project's scope — you'd need to check preset.io directly.

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2. Hierarchy / Matrix Table

Good news — Pivot Table v2 does support hierarchical expand/collapse behavior similar to Power BI's matrix visual. The plugin maintains collapsedRows and collapsedCols state and provides toggle functions (toggleRowKey, toggleColKey, collapseAttr, expandAttr) that let you expand/collapse individual groups or entire hierarchy levels at once [1]. It shows plus/minus icons for the collapsed/expanded state [2].

Beyond basic expand/collapse, the Pivot Table v2 also supports:

• Drill to Detail — click a cell to see underlying records
• Drill By — add additional dimensions while maintaining filters
• Cross-filtering — click cells to filter other dashboard charts

[3]

So the Pivot Table v2 should cover your Power BI matrix-style use case. Just add multiple columns to your "Rows" control in the order of your hierarchy (Region → Country → City → Store).

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3. Interactive Calendar Chart

The legacy calendar plugin (@superset-ui/legacy-plugin-chart-calendar) is still included in Superset [4], but it's a D3-based chart using the cal-heatmap library. Key limitations:

• It uses the legacy chart API (useLegacyApi: true) which predates modern interactive features [5]
• No cross-filtering support — it doesn't implement Behavior.InteractiveChart or emit cross-filter events [6]
• It has known tooltip lifecycle bugs [7]

There is no ECharts-based calendar chart in Superset currently, and I couldn't find evidence of SIP-113 being actively pursued. The ECharts library does support a calendar coordinate system, so building a custom plugin is feasible.

To build a custom interactive calendar chart plugin, you'd follow the standard ECharts plugin structure [8]:

1. Create a directory under plugin-chart-echarts/src/Calendar/ with index.ts, controlPanel.tsx, buildQuery.ts, transformProps.ts, and EchartsCalendar.tsx
2. In transformProps.ts, use ECharts' calendar coordinate system to build the heatmap grid
3. Add Behavior.InteractiveChart to the metadata behaviors to enable cross-filtering
4. Implement click handlers with setDataMask to emit cross-filter events on day selection
5. Export from plugin-chart-echarts/src/index.ts and register in MainPreset.js

There's a detailed step-by-step example of creating a custom ECharts plugin that walks through this exact process [9]. The official docs also cover plugin creation: Creating Visualization Plugins.

Hope this helps point you in the right direction!

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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Docs are dead. Just use Dosu.