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Feature request: a framework render slot for axis tick labels

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
react, typescript
Domain
data-visualization

Research direction

Start by reading the axis tick configuration under scales.y and the existing tooltip render path, RendererChart from @tanstack/charts/react/tooltip. The issue suggests either an axis render slot or exposing resolved tick positions and the plot rect, so the API and layout behavior still need design. Done means framework-rendered tick labels can be positioned and sized by the chart without duplicating plot layout math.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Version: @tanstack/charts 1.0.0, React adapter

Problem

Tick labels are SVG text. ticks.format returns a string. There is no way to render a framework component (an icon, an image, a styled badge) as a tick label.

Recharts lets you pass a component as tick. We used this for an Elo chart. Each y tick shows a skill level icon and the Elo value next to it. Each x tick on one variant shows a styled match result marker.

The tooltip already has a framework render path (RendererChart from @tanstack/charts/react/tooltip). Tick labels do not.

Our workaround

We hide the axis labels in the chart and render them as HTML over the plot. The component must know the plot layout:

  • the y position of each tick, as a fraction of the y domain
  • the x position of each tick, as a fraction of the x domain
  • the plot insets and the x padding, so that the HTML labels line up with the SVG plot

Simplified from our code:

// Our own copy of the plot insets (example values). It must match the
// chart definition.
const layout = { top: 8, bottom: 24, start: 72, end: 8, xPadding: 12 };

<Frame>
  <Chart definition={definition} ariaLabel={label} height={height} />

  <YAxisLayer
    style={{
      insetBlock: `${layout.top}px ${layout.bottom}px`,
      inlineSize: layout.start - TICK_GAP,
    }}
  >
    {yTicks.map(tick => (
      <SkillTick key={tick} value={tick} offset={getYFraction(yDomain, tick)} />
    ))}
  </YAxisLayer>

  <PlotLayer
    style={{
      insetBlock: `${layout.top}px ${layout.bottom}px`,
      insetInline: `${layout.start + layout.xPadding}px ${layout.end + layout.xPadding}px`,
    }}
  >
    {rows.map(row => (
      <ResultTick key={row.x} row={row} position={getXFraction(xDomain, row.x)} />
    ))}
  </PlotLayer>
</Frame>

This works, but:

  • We copy the scale math and the plot insets into the component. If the library changes its layout, the labels move away from the plot.
  • The library cannot measure the labels, so we reserve the label space by hand (a fixed gap and a fixed width).
  • The labels are not part of the chart accessibility tree.

Suggested API

A render slot on the axis, for the adapters that support it. For example:

scales: {
  y: {
    scale: scaleLinear,
    axis: {
      ticks: {
        render: tick => <SkillTick value={tick.value} />,
        // the space the library reserves for each label
        size: { width: 64, height: 24 },
      },
    },
  },
},

The library positions each slot at the tick, like it does for the tooltip. An alternative is to expose the resolved tick positions and the plot rect to the framework layer (for example through a callback or a hook), so that an overlay does not have to copy the math.

Written by an agent (Claude Code, claude-opus-5-5).

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
819
Forks
49
Avg merge
8h 8m
Merged PRs (30d)
11

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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