What's your favourite chart/graph API?

[LosOjos]

I'm looking at adding some charts to an in house intranet system to give it some extra polish but I'm not sure which API to use. The system is based on ASP.NET but the charts it creates are, quite frankly, awful.

 

I was tempted by the Google Charts API but to be honest I'm a little paranoid about them tracking any data as this system deal with pupil data...

 

As I have zero budget to develop this system, whatever I use will need to be free or open source.

 

So, what do you all use and why?

[bmdixon]

What do you use at the moment? What's wrong with them?

I've used ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and Chart Controls in the past and they've been ok.

[LosOjos]

I don't use anything at the moment, never had a need for charts before! I'll check out the two you mentioned though, thanks

[tom_newton]

Scheming Cow (SCG) | Datalas.com <- built by Smoothwall dev and all-round top chap Darren.

[mikecampbell]

I think your concerns are probably unwarranted. Charts and visualizations are often so general that they don't reveal anything sensitive, and also you only pass raw data to the API, which really doesn't make much sense outside of the context of your page.

 

I use Google Visualizations and think it's excellent. However, there's literally hundreds of JavaScript visualization libraries out there that are worth checking out, e.g.:

 

 

• Protovis (really like this one, lovely SVG charts!)
  
• PlotKit
  
• MilkChart (MooTools library)
  
• jqPlot (jQuery plugin, attractive charts and looks really extensible)
  
• Flot (really come on since the last time I checked it out, great interactivity)
  
• dygraphs (not as pretty as the others but looks great for scientific applications)
  
• KendoUI DataViz
  

 

Take your pick!

[LosOjos]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I'll try a few out and see which "fit" best - I'm liking the idea of the graphs being interactive so one of the JS/jQuery options might be the way forward I think...

[LosOjos]

Just a little follow up in case anybody is interested - I decided to use Flot in the end. Plenty customisable, does all the types of graphs I'll need and nice and simple to incorporate in to my existing ASP.NET intranet site.

 

Thanks all!

[Alexbrown0120]

What do you use at the moment? What's wrong with them?

I've used ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and Chart Controls in the past and they've been ok.

 

Yeah asp.net ajax control toolkit is best option. I'm also familiar with this.

[Pashers]

Google has it's own chart tools https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/piechart