I'm currently adding an analytics module (we have some specific metrics not covered by general packages like Google analytics) to our main web application and we are looking for a good library to create graphs and charts. I've found a couple that generate nice graphs via a .swf file by passing xml parameters, but wondered if anyone had any specific recommendations in this area? Thanks for any guidance anyone can provide.
Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
1–8 of 8 posts
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#2Try JavaScript JSXGRAPH
http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wiki/index.php/Hypotrochoid has a bit of a learning curve though.
Also the jQuery flot plugin http://code.google.com/p/flot/
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#3We use http://amcharts.com/. The thing I like the best about it is that you can customize everything through a visual web based editor, and then just copy the xml that is generated. It has also been stable for us, but one downside of course is that the web browser needs flash installed.
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#4I'm using Matplotlib with the Agg backend to generate PNGs, great quality, easy to use and fast.
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#5this is probably not new info but http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ in the flash world, flex comes with a charts package and there is prefuse flare which has some charting ability. It's worth noting that the new versions of flash run off AS3, which is a full fledge programming language so rather than passing in XML parameters you would probably be better of writing some code in AS3 that utilizes the library.
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#6We've had some success with http://www.simplechart.net
It's fairly easy to use and can generate charts in PNG and JPEG format.
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#7We use http://amcharts.com/ . The thing I like the best about it is that you can customize everything through a visual web based editor, and then just copy the xml that is generated. It has also been stable for us, but one downside of course is that the web browser needs flash installed.
amcharts is the one we picked as well
Re: Ask HN: Charting Libraries?
#8Try JavaScript JSXGRAPH http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wiki/index.php/Hypotrochoid has a bit of a learning curve though. Also the jQuery flot plugin http://code.google.com/p/flot/
I'll second the flot recommendation. I recently started using it on a hobby side-project (http://www.gdpinbananas.com/) and am enjoying it.
It's dead-simple and doesn't require a lot of tweaking to make the charts look decent. Check out some of the author's examples here: http://people.iola.dk/olau/flot/examples/