NAME

Jifty::Plugin::Chart - A charting API for Jifty

SYNOPSIS

In your config.yml:

Plugins:
  - Chart: {}

In your Mason templates:

<% Jifty->web->chart(
    type   => 'Bar',
    width  => 400,
    height => 300,
    data   => [
        [ '2004', '2005', '2006', '2007' ], # labels
        [ 14,     15,     17,     22     ], # first data set
        [ 22,     25,     20,     21     ], # second data set
    ],
) %>

DESCRIPTION

CAUTION: This plugin is experimental. The API will change.

This plugin provides a charting API that can be used by Jifty applications to build data visualizations without regard to the underlying rendering mechanism.

As of this writing, the API is a barely veiled interface over Chart. However, I intend to expand the interface to apply to something like Maani's XML/SWF Charts or Imprise Javascript charts or even something like OpenLaszlo (or something Open Source and Perl if I can find or build such a thing in time).

INTERFACE

By adding this method to the plugin configuration for your Jifty application, you will cause Jifty::Web to inherit a new method, chart, which is the cornerstone of this API.

This method is described in Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Web and an example is shown in the "SYNOPSIS" above.

CONFIGURATION

Here is an example configuration for config.yml:

Plugins:
  - Chart:
      DefaultRenderer: PlotKit
      PreloadRenderers:
       - XMLSWF
       - SimpleBars
       - App::Renderer::Custom

The available options are:

DefaultRenderer

This is the name of the class to use as the default renderer. Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Renderer::Chart is the current default, but that could change in the future. It's recommended that you set this to your preference.

PreloadRenderers

This is a list of other render classes to load during initialization. If they are not loaded during initialization some renderers may not work correctly the first time they are run because they are not able to inform Jifty of the CSS or JS files they need before that part of the page is already rendered. If you use the "renderer" option of "chart" in Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Web, then you should make sure any value you use is set here in the configuration to make sure it works properly.

METHODS

init

Adds the "chart" in Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Web method to Jifty::Web.

init_renderer

my $renderer = $chart_plugin->init_renderer($renderer_class)

This is a helper method that is used by the API to initialize the renderer class. This is handled automatically so you probably shouldn't use this.

SEE ALSO

Jifty::Plugin, Jifty::Web, Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Renderer, Jifty::Plugin::Chart::Renderer::Chart, Jifty::Plugin::Chart::View

AUTHOR

Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp <andrew.hanenkamp@boomer.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2007 Boomer Consulting, Inc.

This is free software and may be modified and redistributed under the same terms as Perl itself.

cpanm Jifty::Plugin::Chart

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Jifty::Plugin::Chart