Can't make paths draw growing slowly with D3

Question

Using the d3 graphics library, I can't seem to make paths draw slowly so they can be seen growing.

This site has a perfect example in the "Line Chart (Unrolling)" section, but no code is given for that section. Could someone please help me with the lines of D3 code that could make that happen?

When I try appending delay() or duration() such as in the following code snippet, the path still draws immediately, And all the SVG code after this segment fails to render.

    var mpath = svg.append ('path');
        mpath.attr ('d', 'M35 48 L22 48 L22 35 L22 22 L35 22 L35 35 L48 35 L48 48')
             .attr ('fill', 'none')
             .attr ('stroke', 'blue')
             .duration (1000);

Answer 1

A common pattern when animating lines in svg is setting a stroke-dasharray of the length of the path and then animate stroke-dashoffset:

var totalLength = path.node().getTotalLength();

path
  .attr("stroke-dasharray", totalLength + " " + totalLength)
  .attr("stroke-dashoffset", totalLength)
  .transition()
    .duration(2000)
    .ease("linear")
    .attr("stroke-dashoffset", 0);

You can see a demo here: http://bl.ocks.org/4063326