Looking for some good looking graphs without having to pay for a library or resort to Flash graphs? Try creating your own using pChart. pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. This project focuses on allowing developers to generate great looking graphs by increasing rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm.
The graphs from pChart are generated using GD library, so you’ll need that installed on your server if you’re planning to use this library.
The documentation does mention that creating real time graphs will be pretty CPU intensive so you may want to look at caching or pre-generating the graphs. To help you with this, the pChart framework also comes with pCache which helps in caching graphs – so you don’t have to keep rendering graphs on the fly. To get to know more on pChart and how to use it, head over to their documentation page. For a look at the graphs you can generate using this library, take a look at the chart gallery.
Link: pChart Project Home Page
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Kevin on October 22, 2008
I used that in a customer project, its a simple to use PHP API.
For small charts, you could use the Google Chart API instead, but a lot of people more like to use self-hosted solutions, so pChart i your friend
libChart is another PHP solution: http://naku.dohcrew.com/libchart/
dave on October 23, 2008
there is a graphing library in pear, image_graph
as well as jpgraph, http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/
both are object oriented libraries
i think there’s also one in pecl, gdchart, but i’m not sure how well that one is maintained
so there seems to be an abundance of choice for php developers
vinu on October 23, 2008
@dave and @kevin Thanks for the links – I’ve tried most of the options in the past, but was not too happy with the quality of the graphs.
Vinu Thomas’ Blog: pChart - PHP charting library : Dragonfly Networks on October 23, 2008
[...] Thomas points out a nice looking PHP charting library on his blog today – [...]
Philipp on October 23, 2008
Thank you. Looks promising
Moises on December 9, 2008
I use now another method. I prefer to send the data and create the graphic in the client with Javascript. Have you seen Flot?
vinu on December 10, 2008
Thankyou Moises – Flot looks pretty good.
Les on October 22, 2009
The only problem as I recall with libChart is that they insist on putting their own banner on your charts, which is a right turn off…
That’s like someone watching over you whilst your doing the business