Zope: Creating a Graph or Chart using OpenFlashChart

OpenFlashChart is an Adobe Flash object for rendering charts and graphs on web pages. The developer create a data source which provides formatted data to the Flash object. This data specifies what and how information should be presented.

Creating a Data Source

A data source will almost always be a Python Script. The script outputs a formatted file which is used by the Flash object to present data. Below is an example data source script.

graph = container.ECN.Ztools.OpenFlashChart.createData()

graph.title('Example Graph', '{font-size: 20px;}')

graph.line(2, '#FF0000', 'Data', 10)
graph.set_data([10, 20, 15, 5])
graph.set_x_labels(['Apples','Oranges','Bananas','Grapes'])

graph.set_y_max(25)
graph.y_label_steps(5)

return graph.render()

 This example data source represents a graph with one line plotting four points. The first line in this script creates a 'graph' object which provides methods to assist in creating the chart data. View a full list of methods of the graph object.

Embedding the Chart

Once a data source is defined the chart can be embedded within an Page Template or DTML Document by calling the following method, where data_source_script is the path to your data source script.

ECN.Ztools.OpenFlashChart.render('data_source_script', width=500, height=300)

This will output an object and embed tag to include the chart within your page.

Examples

• BarChart
• LineGraph
• LineAndBar