Installation and setup information
- The benefits of using RGraph
- Browser support for RGraph
- Getting started with RGraph
- Integration with server-side scripting
- Improving the performance of your charts
The benefits of using RGraph
Read about the benefits of using RGraph
Read about the benefits of using RGraph to show charts on
your website.
Benefits include things such as saving money, better
website performance and it also allows you to create pretty charts!
Browser support for RGraph
Read about browser support for RGraph
Information about browser support for RGraph.
For years now browser
support for canvas
and svg
has been good with most of
both desktop and mobile browsers able to display them.
-
RGraph version 6
As of version 6 RGraph will start to use
es6
features so you'll need to be using a more recent browser to see your charts. - Older version (5.xx) requirements These are the requirements for the older, version 5.28 version of RGraph. This version is available for you to download from the download page.
-
HTML5 canvas, HTML5 SVG & Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE)
Details of Internet Explorer support. More recent versions
of Internet Explorer have had
good support for
canvas
andsvg
, since version 9. -
Other devices
Details of support for other devices. Typically the newer
the device then the more likely it is to
have support for the
canvas
andsvg
tags. it will be hard to find a device that doesn't have support these days (2017+). - Creating your charts without a browser How you can create your charts without a browser by using PhantomJS. This is just a note with a link to the PhantomJS website. This means that you can create charts from automatic scripts, such as scheduled tasks.
Getting started with RGraph
Read how to get up and running with RGraph
How to start with RGraph - a basic chart. This bit of
information is an easy way to understand how RGraph works and how you can
use it on your website.
- Suggested structure for RGraph A suggested structure for the RGraph libraries. Having a good structure makes things easy to handle and makes things easier for future developers.
- Alternative structure for RGraph An alternative structure for the RGraph libraries that could also be used. This layout includes dates in the filenames so can make upgrading to a newer RGraph release quicker and easier.
- The $p(), $a(), $c() and $d() functions RGraph has a few useful debug functions that you can use while making your charts. These functions can make finding problems with your code easier. So much so in fact that you may want to add them to your own code.
Integration with server-side scripting
Learn about integrating RGraph with server-side scripting
Learn how to add RGraph to your server-side scripts.
This page has examples of using the php
mysql
, mysqli
and pdo
extensions.
Learn how to make ajax
requests, saving your (canvas
)
charts as images and how to read csv
data.
-
Integration with PHP and MySQL using the MySQL extension
Information about integrating RGraph with the older
php
mysql
extension. This extension has been deprecated for some time but is still in use and is an easy way to connect to your database. -
Integration with PHP and MySQL using the MySQLi extension
Information about integrating RGraph with the
php
mysqli
extension. Themysqli
extension is a newer way thatphp
has available to connect to yourmysql
database server. -
Integration with PHP and MySQL using the PDO extension
Information about integrating RGraph with the
php
pdo
extension. Like the MySQLi extension,pdo
is a newer way to fetch data from your database server, butpdo
is more of an abstraction interface that can connect to other database servers as well asmysql
. -
Making AJAX requests
Information about making
ajax
requests with RGraph. RGraph has someajax
functions that are available to both thesvg
andcanvas
libraries that make it much easier to fetch data byajax
. If they're not good enough for you though you can always use otherajax
libraries or things such as thejquery
$.ajax()
function. -
Saving the chart as an image on the server
How to save your charts as an image on the server. Like
all (client-side)
javascript
RGraph runs in your browser. An easy way of fetching data from your server is to useajax
. In some cases this can actually improve performance too as the amount of data that is sent by the server is smaller.
Improving the performance of your charts
Improving the performance of your charts
Hints and tips on how to improve the speed of your
charts and also your entire website.
The tips here are aimed
at increasing the speed of your charts but many can also be
applied across your whole site (eg using gzip
compression)
giving your website and your charts even more of a speed
boost. Studies
have shown that having a faster website can make your users
happier and can then lead on to bigger sales figures and
turnover!
- A reasonable performance strategy What's a good way to improve the speed of your charts? Well not every tip or tweak needs to be used so this is what you should consider doing first as these tips give the biggest bang for your buck.
- General website performance tools Links to a few useful more general website speed tools which can be used to gauge the effectiveness of your speed tweaks. These tools can be used to increase the speed of your entire website - not just your RGraph pages. You'll find that the PageSpeed tool, in particular, is very useful.
-
Note about performance and HTTP/2
A note about how
http/2
means that some of the performance tweaks that are listed here will become less necessary. The main thing to remember withhttp/2
is that it takes place over a single connection (per server) so keep that in mind when planning your performance tweaks.