How to create sparklines
A guide for creating inline mini-bar charts and sparklines. These are commonly used within a paragraph of text and give an overview of what's being talked about.
A previous request has been for inline plus/minus charts - much like sparklines. Both of these are possible by using the configuration options available to make the chart appear as desired. The main thing is to use a smaller canvas size to make the chart fit inline with your text.
Inline Bar charts
Here the colors are defined by looping through the data beforehand to determine whether a value is positive or
negative. When this is ascertained the color can be set appropriately and also the colorsSequential option.
This is an example of an inline Bar chart:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
<script>
data = [10,9,8,-8,-9,-10];
colors = [];
// Create the colors
for (var i=0; i<data.length; ++i) {
colors.push(data[i] > 0 ? '#0f0' : 'red');
}
new RGraph.Bar({
id: 'cvs1',
data: data,
options: {
xaxisPosition: 'center',
yaxisScale: false,
yaxis: false,
backgroundGrid: false,
colors: colors,
colorsSequential: true,
marginLeft: 2,
marginRight: 2,
marginTop: 2,
marginBottom: 2,
colorsStroke: 'rgba(0,0,0,0)',
marginInner: 1,
xaxisTickmarksLength: 0
}
}).draw();
</script>
Inline Line charts (sparklines)
With sparklines the process is much the same except without the loop for the colors.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
<script>
new RGraph.Line({
id: 'cvs2',
data: [4,5,3,4,2,3,5,4,5,4,3,5,3],
options: {
marginLeft: 1,
marginRight: 1,
marginTop: 1,
marginBottom: 1,
backgroundGrid: false,
xaxis: false,
yaxis: false,
linewidth: 1,
tickmarksStyle: null,
yaxisScaleMax: 10,
yaxisScale: false,
shadow: false
}
}).draw();
</script>
Taking it further
One option if you're finding the charts too small, or you wish to enlarge them when clicked is to add an anchor (link) around the canvas so that when clicked a ModalDialog is shown with a larger version of the chart - a detail view if you like.