Last week, the news hit the blogosphere that Google had released a beta
API for generating graphs using
a reasonably easy and transparent GET parametrisation.
Inspired by this, and inspired by my early playing around with Ruby on
Rails, I decided to whack together a Rails plugin that takes care of
building the Google Charts IMG tag using what I hope is reasonably easy
to use syntax.
I have a test-site using random
data up for playing
around with it.
The test-site as such runs on Ruby on Rails. The controller does some
parsing and setting up of relevant arrays, and primarily generates
random data for plotting.
The view has the following source code:
<%= google_chart(@data, @alt_text, @options) %>
<% form_tag "" do %>
Type
<%= select_tag "options[type]", options_for_select(@typeopts,@options["type"])
%>
Title
<%= text_field_tag "options[title]", @options["title"] %>
Granularity
<%= select_tag "options[encoding]", options_for_select(@encopts,@options["encoding"]) %>
<%= hidden_field_tag "datalength", 3 %>
<%= hidden_field_tag "dslengthmin", 5 %>
<%= hidden_field_tag "dslengthmax", 50 %>
<%= hidden_field_tag "dsmin", 0 %>
<%= hidden_field_tag "dsmax", 10000 %>
<%= submit_tag %>
<% end %>
where the @options array is populated with the options tag from the
input pretty straight off.
The whole plugin resides at a project of its own at
rubyforge. So far, I
have not yet implemented color handling, grid lines or marker setting.
I'm happy to share code responsibility or getting suggestions for how to
handle the outstanding issues or improve on the code. Just get in touch
with me if you feel like contributing.