CartoDB create layer at runtime

Question

I'm almost totally new to CartoDB. I've been looking around and read the api reference, but there seems not to be what I'm looking for.

What I want to do is to "Create visualizations at runtime". From what I read, it is possible to do it only if you already have a visualization created with the UI and then you can work with sublayers.

But what I actually want to do is to create a visualization from scratch, using just the table containing the values I want to represent on the map.

Is this possible or I'm totally out of mind?

Answer 1

Yes, totally possible. That is what this portion is about Visualization at runtime

You'll see that the method doesn't include anything about an existing visualization, but just defines sublayers for a new one on the fly. The sublayers contain info about the table and columns you wish to use. Here it is generically,

cartodb.createLayer(map, {
  user_name: 'your user name',
  type: 'cartodb',
  sublayers: [{
    sql: "SELECT * FROM table_name",
    cartocss: '#table_name {marker-fill: #F0F0F0;}'
  }]
})
.addTo(map)

Where table_name is just that, the table you want to turn into a visualization. Your username can be found by the URL of your account, it is always http://username.cartodb.com... when you are signed in.