I need to create a data visualization in a web application, I wanted to use Highcharts since I have some previews experience, the problem is that the visualization I need to create is more custom, based on my investigation I'd need to use something like D3 which allows to do more things, but maybe someone has done something similar using a library with a smaller learning curve.
Is it possible to create a visualization like this (the image to the right) without using D3? Each of the small boxes inside the bars is an element that should be clickable to show it's details inside a card-like HTML element.
I saw this example with Highcharts, but it's not quite what I want and I'm not sure if what I need can also be done.
Thanks in advance for any help.
We are developing a web application using Spring+Tiles. We have a requirement that we have to create a bar graph in a jsp page. We searched a lot on web regarding this issue. Means how we can create a bar graph using Open source Charts API. We found many suggested APIs like JFreeChart, charts4j and etc.
But we are not sure which one to use. Actually our requirement is we have to create a bar graph which can be drillable.
Please help us. If you could give any examples that will be highly appreciated.
Thank you very much in advance. Thanks a lot.
I would recommend you to use the rest services and send the json to highcharts OR D3.js OR DDChart, its the best thing to do in your case below link can do what you want :
http://www.highcharts.com/demo/column-drilldown
Highchart (licence) : http://jsfiddle.net/yPVX9/2/
D3 (free) : http://jsfiddle.net/mcuepavh/1/
DDChart (free) : http://kiersimmons.com/DDChart/index.html
You can try FusionCharts for a drill down chart.
Have a look to this and you can use this in your application : Fusion Charts Linked Charts. Regarding licensing issues,you may get in touch Sales Team.
Apart from that, you can use Raphael.js . Start from the basics say try creating a small rectangle, fill some color, opacity, binding some events,etc. With a day effort you can make a simple bar chart. Once you make a bar chart, attach an event to clear your container and redraw another bar chart with the drill down data. Thats the concept you need for your drill-down.
Having said that, I would still recommend you to use Fusion Charts because they takes care of some smart things - like space management of the bars, the intervals, the colour codes of the bars(if not hard-coded), axis part... Its a finished product which abstracts you from the technical obstructions and give your application a beautiful add-on.
I am trying to learn D3 JS and how it can be applied in current application.I am new to this application.
While going through the application I found that there is already a feature providing data visualization in the form of graphs using EXT Js charts.
Could anybody help me understand the advantage of data visualization using ext js over D3 JS and is there any reason for going with one over other? Thanks in advance.
ExtJS is a commercial web app framework for many things including data visualization. D3.js is an open source low level library for creating svg-based charts.
The first question you need to figure out is if you only want charts or all the features that come with ExtJS.
If you just want to draw standard charts (bar, line, area, pie etc.) you may consider using highcharts, google charts, or a higher level library on top of d3.js such as nvd3.js or Rickshaw since they are easier to use. Otherwise if you want a very non-standard and customized chart, d3.js is very powerful for implementing any possible kind of visualization.
D3 is just for visualization, ExtJS is a full framework that hast a lot of other components (grids, windows, layouts, etc...).
Also ExtJS doesn't get well with other libraries, since it overrides several things in the global CSS.
Therefore, if you have a full page that has more than just graphs... feel free to use ExtJS for the whole page, but if you already have something else on the page, then go for D3.
I am aiming to build a site that will contain a lot of user generated data, hopefully.
I'm in my first year of self learning programming: Python, Django, MySQL, HTML and Javascript.
I can chart dummy data on a table just fine, but I'm now looking at turning that data into nice colorful looking graphs.
I am in my first day of investigation into finding out how to do this. But before I continue, I would like to ask a few questions.
There seems to be many JavaScript frameworks for building charts, such as Google charts and jquery charts, and some object orientated programs for building charts, such as Cairo Plot and matplotlib.
The Javascript frameworks seem initially like a nice easy way to do it. However, whereas with tables, where you can enter variable data tags in the body of an HTML page, and have Javascript make it look pretty, the data of a graph goes in the scripting area, where the variable data tags don't quite seem to work the same way. I'm using Django, so a variable tag looks like:
{{ uniquenum }}
Q1. Should this work and am I just doing it wrong, or am I right in thinking variable tags can't go in the scripting area?
Q2. Can you have Javascript frameworks produce graphs from data outside the <script> area?
Q3. I've read that Javascript frameworks are getting more powerful, but because I'll be potentially using large amounts of dynamic data, should I be concentrating on using OO style graph programs like Cairo Plot and matplotlib, which to me don't seem to have the same levels of support?
Just looking for a nudge in the right direction.
How are the plots (typically) placed on the web page?
Here's the usual API schema for javascript-based data visualization libraries:
i. pre-allocate a div as the chart container in your markup (or template); typically using an id selector using an id selector, like so:
<div id="chart1"> </div>
Often these libraries also require that this container be pre-sized--styled with height and width properties e.g.,
<div id="chart1" style="height:300px;width:500px; "></div>
HTML5 libraries are particular about the container--i.e., they require the chart to be placed inside the canvas tag, e.g.,
ii. call the plot constructor from your included javascript file and pass in (i) a data source; (ii) aesthetic options (e.g., axis labels), and (iii) the location in your markup of the container that will hold the plot; this location is usually expected to be in the form of an id selector. So in jqplot for instance inside the jQuery ready event,
plot1 = $.jqplot('chart1', [dataSet1, dataSet2], chartOptions)
javascript-based data visualization libraries i recommend (based on having used each for multiple projects).
I. conventional plotting formats: bar, line, point, pie
Among javascript plotting libraries, i recommend the jQuery-based options because you need less code to create yoru plots and because it's easier to use jQuery's AJAX methods to load your data, for instance, jqplot, flot, and HighCharts (the three libraries that i recommend below) all include in their basic distribution, complete (html, css, js) example plots that demonstate loading data via AJAX.
HighCharts (open source but requires paid license for commercial use, but the most polished and longest feature list; active and fairly high signal-noise ratio forums on the HighCharts Site)
flot (perhaps the most widely used)
jqplot (large selection of plot types, highly modular, e.g,. most functinality beyond the basics is added one plugin at a time)
II. graphs, trees, network diagrams, etc.
d3 (the successor to protovis; stunning graphic quality, rich interactive elements, animation; not strictly jQuery-based, but the author clearly borrowed the basic syntax patterns from jQuery; excellent tutorials on d3 by an accomplished data visualization specialist, Jan Willem Tulp Unlike the others mentioned here, this is a low-level library; indeed there are (at least) several plotting libraries based on d3, e.g., rickshaw by shutterstock, and cube by Square. If you want conventional x-y line/bar plots then for instance, you can build your plots in e.g., HighCharts much faster. D3 becomes more interesting as use cases become more specific--in particular animation and unorthodox visualization (sunburst diagrams, chord diagrams, parallel line plots, geographic maps, etc.)
RafaelJS, renders in SVG, along with d3 and processing.js, you can make just about anything (e.g., two-player games in the browser) with this library; gRafael is a separate library for creating the usual plot types (bar, line, pie)
III. time-series plots
dygraphs (a javascript library dedidated soley to time-series plotting, and its feature set reflects this mission, e.g., capacity
to process and render plots with high volumes of data (>10,000
points), wide range of opdtions for tick labels of time axis with
many formatting options
HighStock (a time-series library from the HighChart guys)
IV. real-time/streaming data
Smoothie Charts (sparse feature set, only intended to do one thing well which is smoothly render streaming data; HighCharts, jqplot, and flot will also do this, but depending on the character of your data (variance, rate) these three general-purpose libraries might not show the data as "spiky", which is precisely what Smoothie was designed to eliminate)
If you're going to deal with very large datasets (>10000 elements), you will probably run into performance problems, no matter what Javascript library you end up picking.
Having said that, there's a growing number of Javascript toolkits which dynamycally load the data set with an HTTP request as a JSON, XML, etc... flot is pretty fast and open source. Highcharts is very feature rich and free for non-commercial projects. And if you need more esoteric visualizations, you must take a look at d3.js.
I have found another javascript charting library to be useful for streaming data = https://github.com/INRIA/VisualSedimentation. The code is baed on d3.js, but has some good extensibility.
Has anyone seen an open-source library that produces charts similar to Github.com's commit timeline charts? Check out this profile (picked one at random) and note the bar graphs below each project.
I've been trying to dominate Flot into behaving correctly but it just doesn't have the flexibility of formatting options to come up with a decent clone. Personally, I'd prefer a Javascript implementation but I'm open to looking at server-side stuff as well.
Definitely has to be a stand-alone implementation, the application is headed to a network separated from the Internet, so Google Charts API is out of the question.
I'd suggest using jQuery Sparklines. You'll need to create two separate graphs and position them on top of one another (one for the blue bars, another for the gray bars). You'll also need to make the dotted line/legend an image, but github also uses an image for that.
Here are some decent values to get you started:
EDIT: I originally overlapped two separate sparklines with relative positioning, but it would be better to use the "composite" option to draw two graphs on the same canvas.