Why qlik-embed

Introduction

In this post, you are going to learn about qlik-embed, Qlik’s new library for embedding data and analytics user interfaces into your own web applications.

As browser makers introduce new privacy and security features into their browsers, embedding content from one software application to another has become more complex. You must consider third-party cookies, cross-site request forgery, content security policy, and other concerns before the visualization you want to place inside your application will render successfully.

With qlik-embed, the intent is to resolve these concerns in advance so that you can embed analytics into your web applications with confidence and ease.

The guiding principles for qlik-embed are:

• A first-class component of a unified front-end core architecture ensuring embedded solutions do not break when core product features change.
• Make it easy to embed any Qlik UI in a world wide web without iframes.
• Mitigate authentication complexity by providing ways to embed content without introducing third-party cookie issues.

Why qlik-embed

Qlik-embed is designed to work with applications written in plain html to more robust frameworks like React and Svelte. In fact, no matter which qlik-embed library you choose the configuration options will be the same, the methods and properties will be same. The only differences will be those inherent in the framework you use to implement qlik-embed into your application.

Using qlik-embed web components is an improvement over iframes in several key ways:

1. qlik-embed allows you to configure the properties of the content you’re embedding. Iframes don’t offer configuration options unless they are driven by parameters in the source URL.
2. qlik-embed supports modern auth strategies like OAuth2, mitigating third-party cookie and cross-site scripting issues between web applications. Iframes rely on cookies to render content, a method browser makers are actively making harder to do.
3. qlik-embed provides access to the API of the embedded content so you can work with the code underneath to enrich the parent web page. Iframes do not support this capability without hacks and workarounds.

Why qlik-embed over Capability API or nebula.js

If you’re already embedding Qlik into your web applications and enterprise solutions, here are more reasons why you’re going to want to switch to qlik-embed.

1. qlik-embed is entity-based, so no matter which framework qlik-embed becomes available, it will work with the exact same properties, methods, and capabilities without tweaks, workarounds, or hoops to jump through. qlik-embed is available as a web-component (@qlik/embed-web-components) and a react library (qlik-embed-react) with support for others like svelte and vue planned for the future.

2. If you use the Capability API, you don’t have to deal with requirejs anymore because qlik-embed takes care of loading the modules it needs to render content fast.

3. If you use nebula.js to embed visualizations, qlik-embed removes all the chart and component loading, reduces the number of lines of code needed to embed an object, and does it using less memory. With qlik-embed handling embedding duties, nebula.js can focus on being the library for creating and extending visualizations for Qlik Analytics.

4. qlik-embed replaces Nebula by using it under the covers to render content, so you don’t have to learn multiple embedding libraries or make trade-offs in which library to implement because of restrictions or limitations.