Book Image

Learn Chart.js

By : Helder da Rocha
Book Image

Learn Chart.js

By: Helder da Rocha

Overview of this book

Chart.js is a free, open-source data visualization library, maintained by an active community of developers in GitHub, where it rates as the second most popular data visualization library. If you want to quickly create responsive Web-based data visualizations for the Web, Chart.js is a great choice. This book guides the reader through dozens of practical examples, complete with code you can run and modify as you wish. It is a practical hands-on introduction to Chart.js. If you have basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript you can learn to create beautiful interactive Web Canvas-based visualizations for your data using Chart.js. This book will help you set up Chart.js in a Web page and show how to create each one of the eight Chart.js chart types. You will also learn how to configure most properties that override Chart’s default styles and behaviors. Practical applications of Chart.js are exemplified using real data files obtained from public data portals. You will learn how to load, parse, filter and select the data you wish to display from those files. You will also learn how to create visualizations that reveal patterns in the data. This book is based on Chart.js version 2.7.3 and ES2015 JavaScript. By the end of the book, you will be able to create beautiful, efficient and interactive data visualizations for the Web using Chart.js.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Introduction to Chart.js


Chart.js is an open source community-maintained JavaScript data visualization library based on HTML5 Canvas. At the time of writing, it is available as version 2.7.3, and comes with eight customizable chart types. It's very easy to create a chart using Chart.js. It can be as simple as loading the JavaScript library into your page, choosing a chart type, and providing it with an array of data.

All charts are configured with a default look and feel, as well as basic interactive features. You can focus on the data and quickly create a simple responsive and interactive chart that fits nicely in your page. You don't have to worry about configuring padding or margins, fitting labels in axes, adding tooltips, or controlling transitions. But if you need to change something, there are many configuration options available.

Installation and setup

To set up a web page for Chart.js, you just need to load the library. If you already have a website set up, you can download Chart.js...