December 6th, 2007 | No Comments

Google Chart API: Generate Images of Charts

Google has a new tool (at least I haven’t come across it before) which allows you to generate PNG images of charts simply by providing a URL with certain parameters.

The Google Chart API allows you to generate a range of different graph styles; line charts, bar charts, pie charts, Venn diagrams and scatter graphs.

You can also format them with a range of different colours and styles.

In the past I’ve used a variety of methods for producing charts for web pages; individual .gifs stretched to create bar charts, Flash charts to give more interactivity, and of course the least dynamic and most time consuming method of producing them in Illustrator.

The Google API gives an easy solution for creating simple charts, which will be more than sufficient for a number of projects. There’s no need for an API key, so setup is a breeze. There’s also a comprehensive developer’s guide which gives you examples of all of the types of charts you can make.

If you’re looking for a solution to produce charts for your site, then I’d say this is a good starting point.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Tools, Web, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can make a comment, or trackback from your own site.