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vis-timeline
Advanced tools
vis-timeline
The Timeline/Graph2D is an interactive visualization chart to visualize data in time. The data items can take place on a single date, or have a start and end date (a range). You can freely move and zoom in the timeline by dragging and scrolling in the Timeline. Items can be created, edited, and deleted in the timeline. The time scale on the axis is adjusted automatically, and supports scales ranging from milliseconds to years.
Badges
Install
Install via npm:
$ npm install vis-timeline
Example
A basic example on loading a Timeline is shown below. More examples can be found in the examples directory of the project.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Timeline</title>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/standalone/umd/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.js"
></script>
<link
href="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/styles/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.css"
rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css"
/>
<style type="text/css">
#visualization {
width: 600px;
height: 400px;
border: 1px solid lightgray;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="visualization"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
// DOM element where the Timeline will be attached
var container = document.getElementById("visualization");
// Create a DataSet (allows two way data-binding)
var items = new vis.DataSet([
{ id: 1, content: "item 1", start: "2014-04-20" },
{ id: 2, content: "item 2", start: "2014-04-14" },
{ id: 3, content: "item 3", start: "2014-04-18" },
{ id: 4, content: "item 4", start: "2014-04-16", end: "2014-04-19" },
{ id: 5, content: "item 5", start: "2014-04-25" },
{ id: 6, content: "item 6", start: "2014-04-27", type: "point" },
]);
// Configuration for the Timeline
var options = {};
// Create a Timeline
var timeline = new vis.Timeline(container, items, options);
</script>
</body>
</html>
Builds
There are four builds provided at the moment.
Standalone build
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/standalone/umd/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.js"
></script>
import { Timeline } from "vis-timeline/standalone";
This has no dependencies and therefore is great for things like MWEs but has more issues with interoperability and bundle bloat. For more information see the following example.
Peer build
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/peer/umd/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.js"
></script>
import { Timeline } from "vis-timeline/peer";
For this build to work you have to load Vis Data and Moment (including locales except English) packages yourself. The advantage here is that it works well with other packages. For more information see the following example.
ESNext build
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/esnext/umd/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.js"
></script>
import { Timeline } from "vis-timeline/esnext";
This is the same as the peer build but without any bundled dependencies or pollyfills. It's indented to be used with bundlers like Rollup or Webpack which will fetch the dependencies, prevent duplicate dependencies in the bundle, use transpilers to add necessary polyfills etc.
Legacy build
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://unpkg.com/vis-timeline@latest/dist/vis-timeline-graph2d.min.js"
></script>
import { Timeline } from "vis-timeline";
This is solely kept for backwards compatibility. It is deprecated and will be removed in case of URLs and replaced by the peer build in case of Node.js/bundlers. Don't use this, please.
Build
To build the library from source, clone the project from github
$ git clone git://github.com/visjs/vis-timeline.git
The source code uses the module style of node (require and module.exports) to
organize dependencies. To install all dependencies and build the library,
run npm install in the root of the project.
$ cd vis-timeline
$ npm install
Then, the project can be build running:
$ npm run build
Excluding external dependencies
External dependencies such as moment, hammerjs can be excluded in the build by running:
$ npm run build -- -e [comma separated module names]
Example:
$ npm run build -- -e moment,hammerjs
Test
To test the library, install the project dependencies once:
$ npm install
Then run the tests:
$ npm run test
Contribute
Contributions to the vis.js library are very welcome! We can't do this alone!
Backers
Thank you to all our backers! 🙏
Sponsors
Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website.
License
Copyright (c) 2014-2017 Almende B.V. and contributors Copyright (c) 2017-2025 vis.js contributors
This work is dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 and MIT. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.
SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR MIT
FAQs
Create a fully customizable, interactive timeline with items and ranges.
The npm package vis-timeline receives a total of 141,518 weekly downloads. As such, vis-timeline popularity was classified as popular.
We found that vis-timeline demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 3 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
Package last updated on 15 Sep 2025
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