- Posted by Ian Suttle on September 28, 2008
- Filed under General
Including charts in your applications often adds value and polish. If you don't have a charting package in your tool belt choosing one can be both confusing and expensive.
If you're in this boat check out Google Charts, which offers free charting with lots of options. And by "free", I mean free... but Google does ask you let them know if you'll be cranking out more than 250,000 charts a day. For you Web 2.0 and cloud junkies this option fits the bill perfectly.
The API is just a combination of URL querystring parameters. Here's a basic example:
This URL: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=300x100&chd=t:40,40,10,10&cht=p3&chl=Java|.NET|PHP|Ruby+on+Rails
Generates this chart:
Here we add blue as the base color by adding '&chco=0000ff':
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=300x100&chd=t:40,40,10,10&cht=p3&chl=Java|.NET|PHP|Ruby+on+Rails&chco=0000ff
You can vary the individual colors, chart types, dimensions, etc. Flexible, fast, and free.