heatmapid

Heatmapid is a concept used in data visualization to refer to a unique identifier assigned to a specific heatmap visualization. It serves as a stable reference that encodes the particular combination of data, preprocessing steps, and visualization parameters that produced the heatmap. The heatmapid may be stored as a string, commonly in formats such as a UUID, a hash, or a compact slug.

The heatmapid is typically generated from a canonical representation of the heatmap configuration. This can include the input data version, feature or column order, normalization and scaling choices, binning or clustering parameters, color scale, annotations, and any applied filters or transformations. Because the heatmapid depends on these inputs, identical configurations can yield the same id, while any change in data or settings produces a new id. Some implementations use cryptographic hashes to ensure compactness and collision resistance.

In practice, heatmapids are used to support reproducibility and caching. A heatmap object may expose its heatmapid to enable rehydration of the visualization, retrieval of a pre-rendered image or table from a cache, or sharing of the exact visualization state with others through links or metadata. Heatmapids also assist in debugging and experiment tracking by enabling precise references to specific heatmap instances.

Notes and limitations: heatmapid is not a universal standard and its format varies across tools. Care should be taken with privacy and cache coherence when heatmapids encode sensitive data or when configurations evolve over time.