Getting your data into Streamlit and generating a basic dashboard

Before going through the practicalities of creating a Streamlit app, we need to look into why we are discussing it in the first place. Usually, dashboards are built in a specialized tool such as Power BI, Looker, Data Studio, or Tableau. Some even use Excel, which has excellent capabilities – and can also be overused. Technically, all these options are excellent.

Firstly, the underlying core of this book is Python. The aim is to provide you, the analyst, with a core set of tools and techniques in one language to be able to do all the facets of your job. And that needs to include dashboarding.

On the other hand, there are increasing limitations to dashboards. They are, by their very nature, static. Streamlit allows you to move into building dynamic data apps in a way that the user can interact with data in a manner not possible with a dashboard. Three reasons stand out when evaluating Streamlit:

• First...