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There are many solutions existing out there to display charts into your pages. Indeed, whatever your reason is to include dynamic charts, it’s often necessary to use third part applications.
It’s never easy to generate them all by yourself, save it as an image and then upload it on your server.
That’s where some applications will come to help you with this problem.
Applications
There are lots of applications / scripts to allow you to do this. Most of the time you will need experience in programming might it be PHP or XML. Most of the solutions I’ll present here are OpenSource, or at least free for personnal usage.
1. PHP/SWF Charts or XML/SWF Charts
This application will allow you to generate Flash based charts, which has the advantage to make them look better and much more dynamic. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to know some PHP or XML to use this solution. One of the drawbacks of this solution is, it’s not fully free. If you plan to use the free version, you will have some features missing, and some links back to the author’s page. Even if this solution is great, these limits made me look for another one.
2. Open Flash Chart
This application is OpenSource, and free, which makes it more attractive. It can also generate very good looking charts. But you still have to know PHP or XML to be able to use it. But that’s worth it. I must say I’m very pleased by this solution as it’s the one I included in ZdStatistics to generate dynamic charts.
3. pChart
This application is quite new and do not generate flash based charts. Instead, it will create png images dynamically as long as you have PHP with GD support enabled. Even if they are not flash animated charts, they look more than good. I must say they really are gorgeous. You can have a look at what can be achieved with it right here.
I must say the project looks very promising and I’m looking forward to include it in zdstats instead of OpenFlashChart.
Services
1. Google Chart API
I must say this service is probably the most efficient. It allow you to generate dynamic graphs with no knowledge of programming. All you have to do is to follow the online documentation to generate nice charts like this one:
Online documentation is well written and reading it will allow you to include your first charts quite fast.
Many other solutions can be found here on Smashing Magazine.
