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Create Flash charts with PHP/SWF Charts
By Mayank Sharma
on
April 05, 2006 (8:00:00 AM)
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PHP/SWF Charts brings interactive eye candy to your charts and graphs. This PHP tool generates 20 types of charts, including line, column, 3-D column, pie, 3-D pie, bar, scatter, and polar charts.
Rather than creating simple images, PHP/SWF Charts outputs Flash movies, which you can view in a browser that's running at least version 6 of Adobe Flash Player. You can click and drill down on the charts, which feature animated transitions and present values on mouse hover. You can update the charts with live data without reloading the page.
PHP/SWF Charts isn't an open source tool, but you can download it for free and use it with certain restrictions. Simply download one of the three archives (around 164KB each), unzip it, and place charts.swf, charts.php, and the charts_library/ directory on your Web server.
Now you're ready to start charting. Say you want to create a chart that plots users' display resolution according to W3Schools' browser statistics. Use this code to generate the chart:
//browser_chart.php -- Creates the chart <?php include "charts.php"; //setting the chart's attributes $chart[ 'axis_value' ] = array ( 'max'=>60, 'font'=>"arial", 'bold'=>true, 'size'=>10 );
$chart[ 'draw' ] = array ( array ( 'type'=>"text", 'rotation'=>-90, 'bold'=>true, size=> '22', 'x'=>10, 'y'=>230, 'width'=>300, 'height'=>200, 'text'=>"Display Resolutions", 'h_align'=>"left", 'v_align'=>"top" ),
array ( 'type'=>"text", 'color'=>"000033", 'alpha'=>50, 'font'=>"arial", 'rotation'=>-90, 'bold'=>true, 'size'=>12, 'x'=>7, 'y'=>210, 'width'=>300, 'height'=>55, 'text'=>"(per 100 visits)", 'h_align'=>"center", 'v_align'=>"middle" ) );
//throwing in the data
$chart ['chart_data'] = array ( array ( "", "2003", "2004", "2005", "2006" ),
array ( "640x480", 2, 1, 0, 0 ),
array ( "800x600", 47, 37, 30, 20 ),
array ( "1024x768", 40, 47, 53, 57 ),
array ( "Higher", 6, 10, 12, 17 ),
array ("Unknown", 5, 5, 5, 6),
);
//send the data to charts.swf
SendChartData ( $chart );
?>
In this file, you specify the data you need the chart to plot. The chart can take data through PHP variables, as shown, or from a database. You also specify the various attributes of the chart, including its type, color, and axis information. The Tutorial and Reference sections on the project's Web site explain the attributes in detail.
Now create a file that displays the chart inside a Web page:
//display_chart.php -- Displays the chart <HTML> <BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <?php //include charts.php to access the InsertChart function include "charts.php"; //include the flash file, the charts library and the php file that has the chart details echo InsertChart ( "charts.swf", "charts_library", "browser_chart.php" ); //footer information
echo "<p><font size=-10>source: <a href=\"http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp\">W3C Browser Statistics</a></font></p>";
?> </BODY> </HTML>
This file can also be an HTML document if you've configured your server to process PHP inside HTML pages.
That's all there is to it. If you still aren't impressed, take a look at the gallery of charts you can create using PHP/SWF Charts.
Comments
on Create Flash charts with PHP/SWF ChartsNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
OSS fanatics often amaze me; they'd just as soon die of thirst in the desert, than to drink a cup of water that wasn't "free".
Software is good because it is useful, not because its source is available.
Sure, write something better (if you can) that includes the source. But religion about the source being available or not is hardly relevant to the topic of this software's usefulness, or people's need to know of its existence.
Software is good because it is useful, not because its source is available.
Sure, write something better (if you can) that includes the source. But religion about the source being available or not is hardly relevant to the topic of this software's usefulness, or people's need to know of its existence.
This is nothing more than an advert and your defending it.
Not one to get into flame wars, but here goes...
I see nothing wrong with this article. It is nice and it is useful. When you need to get work done, it doesn't matter what software you use - it should work.
I know I shouldn't be doing this but... people who don't even care to give their name when writing comments and especially those who don't even know the difference between 'your' and 'you are' are really not the kind whose opinions matter to anyone.
I see nothing wrong with this article. It is nice and it is useful. When you need to get work done, it doesn't matter what software you use - it should work.
I know I shouldn't be doing this but... people who don't even care to give their name when writing comments and especially those who don't even know the difference between 'your' and 'you are' are really not the kind whose opinions matter to anyone.
According to your reasoning, using M$ products is okay too, right? Try writing about "open tools/technologies" (e.g., SVG) that people can use. Don't just submit articles to make some cash from NewsForge!
Fanatic.
Flash is not only proprietary (which is a show-stopper for me too) but a piece of sh*t thing to begin with. I would not even use a "free flash"<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...
Having a non-free tool to create a non-free application us such typical NewsForge corporate brown-nosing that it makes me wonder why I even bother to read their stuff at all
Having a non-free tool to create a non-free application us such typical NewsForge corporate brown-nosing that it makes me wonder why I even bother to read their stuff at all
I know. You are not "free software zealots" or anything has horrible. You are the moderate, pragmatic and suit-compatible (and sponsored) "Open Source" newspaper. Bravo!
But what is this crap article about a non-free, oops, sorry, non-open source application to develop non-free, oops again, I meant non open source products doing here?
Are you THAT desperate for corporate approval?
Is your next "open source" article going to be "how to create mp3s on OSX"?
Pathetic
But what is this crap article about a non-free, oops, sorry, non-open source application to develop non-free, oops again, I meant non open source products doing here?
Are you THAT desperate for corporate approval?
Is your next "open source" article going to be "how to create mp3s on OSX"?
Pathetic
If you happen to know of an open source tool for making SVG graphs with Python and XML, that would be appreciated.
but unlike the other commentors here, I'm not seeing anything wrong with that. If the article does anything, then provoking someone to write an open source (or Free software) alternative. -- Not that we didn't already have PHP chart libraries of one flavour or the other...
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love gag
Create Flash charts with PHP/SWF Charts
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 213.115.91.226] on January 03, 2008 12:53 PM
I was going to use this for a project, but I've since chosen another library, since PHP/SWFCharts doesn't handle certain umlauts (åäö etc). It bugs out completely if any of those chars are in a variable, and it doesn't handle ¨aut; or #382-style substitution either.
Where I stopped reading...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 05, 2006 06:42 PMAlso SWF is just annoying resource hogging dumb stuff and I dont even see the point of use it for diagrams and stuff.
I would prefer PNG image files.
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