Excellent Dynamic Chart API by Google

Google is trying to get rid of a lot of an ancient programming problem: generating charts. Mostly you have to install GD or ImageMagick or something similar and all kinds of libaries just to get to one chart! Their API got rid of the overhead and you can start creating your own charts just by providing the metadata required to visualize it.

Parameters are separated with the ampersand (&) character. You can specify as many parameters as you like, in any order. For example, the Chart API returns the following chart in response to the URL below:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
chs=250x100
&chd=t:60,40
&cht=p3
&chl=Hello|World

Where:

• http://chart.apis.google.com/chart? is the Chart API’s location.
• & separates parameters.
• chs=250x100 is the chart’s size in pixels.
• chd=t:60,40 is the chart’s data.
• cht=p3 is the chart’s type.
• chl=Hello|World is the chart’s label.

You can include a Chart API image in an HTML document by embedding a URL within an <img> tag. For example, the following img tag results in the same image as above:

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
chs=250x100
&chd=t:60,40
&cht=p3
&chl=Hello|World
&alt=Sample chart/>

Maxcode by night…

The following types of charts are available:

• Line chart
• Sparkline
• Bar chart
• Pie chart
• Venn diagram
• Scatter plot
• Radar chart
• Map

Click here for the API.

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