Book Image

Google Visualization API Essentials

By : Traci Lynn Ruthkoski
Book Image

Google Visualization API Essentials

By: Traci Lynn Ruthkoski

Overview of this book

There's a lot of data in our world, and visual representations are often the best method of making sense of it all. Yet, it should not take an army of programmers and analysts to create visualizations in order to make data useful. The Google Visualization API is accessible to novice and advanced programmers alike, making data useful to more people."Google Visualization API Essentials" will show you how to create interactive data displays with very little code. The API, combined with Google Spreadsheets and Fusion Tables, is a complete system, from data management to analytical displays. Not only is it simple to learn, but the Google Visualization API can also be viewed as a first step to learning additional Google APIs."Google Visualization API Essentials" uses both methodology overviews and hands-on examples with real data to introduce chart and graph creation on the Google platform. Topics are presented from various aspects, including Google Spreadsheets and Fusion Tables, and Graphic User Interfaces. An overview of the various API development environments available to developers is also covered. Basic and advanced charts, data source connectivity, style formatting, and publishing options are also explored in depth."Google Visualization API Essentials" brings the arsenal of Google Visualizations into the web developer toolkit.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Architecture and data modification


Before an external data source can be visualized in a chart, a translation from the data source format to a Visualization API-compatible format must be performed. The Visualization API does not directly handle the modification of the values stored in the dataset itself. The intention is not to be a data management tool, instead, the API environment provides a handful of programmatic methods to load selected data into the application. Once in a format it can understand, the Visualization API can manipulate any aspect of the data structure and content. In this way, the Visualization API is able to store initial data and any permutations for visualization purposes, but not become a tool for data source management.

Protocol

To translate between data sources and Visualization API applications, the data source must be "Visualization API-aware". There are several data source options already prepared to work with the Visualization API requests. These data sources...