Google Chart API released

Filed under: Developer, Web services, Google

Google Chart API released

by Chris Gilmer Dec 7th 2007

Have you ever had the need to quickly and dynamically generate charts for a web based application? Google can help.

The new Google Chart API is a tool that one can use to create charts and graphs that can be embedded in websites. Basically, you type a few commands into a URL string and Google will spit out a PNG image with a line chart, bar chart, pie chart, venn diagram, or scatter plot. You can customize colors, points, and sizes. The developers guide walks through everything you might want to accomplish with the API.

When complete, copy the charts URL, and wrap a set of images tags around it to embed it into websites.

For example, the chart you see on the right was generated by entering this URL in a browser.

If you are thinking about doing more than 50,000 queries per day, you might have issues, that's the limit Google places on users per day. Right click on our image in this post, and take a peek at the URL, thats the guts of the image.

Tags: api, chart, chart-api, google

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

kingkool68 said 10:05AM on 12-07-2007

I don't think quickly is how I would describe generating a chart this way. Futzing around in the URL can be a bit tricky especially with their number encoding system.

Although with a dynamic URL construction you could write some simple JavaScript to create animated graphs in a jiffy. Details on my blog -> http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/google-releases-api-for-charts/

Chris Carey said 11:21AM on 12-07-2007

Still doesn't beat what the code DigitalPoint did. Until Google releases that kind of great reporting they won't get ,y attention. Check out their reporting for Adsense, it will blow you away...

http://www.noheat.com/2007/09/06/graph-and-chart-your-google-adsense-revenue/

Adam said 11:10AM on 12-11-2007

We've actually written a wrapper class for the Google Chart API:

http://www.talkphp.com/showthread.php?t=1704

Jon said 7:43PM on 12-11-2007

Hi,

I've also written a bit of script to build Google Charts. Let me know what you think.

Google Charts

Thanks!

Jon said 7:44PM on 12-11-2007

Oops.. URL is http://www.jonwinstanley.com/charts/

Adam said 7:50PM on 12-11-2007

Not bad, Jon. Although yours is a web-based one, whereas ours is a wrapper class to be used professionally in your PHP code.

Adam @ http://www.talkphp.com/

gosha said 8:53PM on 12-11-2007

just another gui for GCharts

http://www.tagarga.com/files/gcui

hope someone likes it

Corey said 12:46PM on 12-12-2007

MindTouch has come out with integration with Google Charts in Deki Wiki, allowing embedding of charts with an easier script implementation. See post on it here: http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2007/12/11/google-charts-and-graphs/

Malaiac said 1:05PM on 12-19-2007

Here is a PHP class to generate and cache Google Charts.
http://www.malaiac.com/GphpChart/

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