Getting Started with Data Visualization (Building a JavaScript Line Chart)
L ine chart is a way of plotting data points on a line. Often, it is used to show trend data or the comparison of two data sets. Line charts can be used on any timeframe, but most often using day-to-day price changes. It is one of the most commonly used data visualization techniques and is a must-have in your data visualization skillset.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to build an interactive line chart using javascript.
Building JavaScript Line Chart
In this tutorial, we will use the AnyChart JavaScript library.AnyChart’s product family is a set of flexible JavaScript (HTML5) libraries for all your data visualization needs. Differentiate your products, applications and web pages with beautiful charts and dashboards. It’s really easy to make any visualization plot with little coding knowledge.
Getting Started
To get started with AnyChart follow these simple steps and your first JavaScript Line chart will be ready in minutes.
1. Create a HTML Page
Make a new HTML page index.html
I created an HTML file having a div element for the chart with id ‘container’. I also included style properties for the container component.
2. Include AnyChart
Next step is to include JavaScript’s libraries which will help us to build the chart
I need to add AnyChart’s ‘base’ and ‘data-adapter’ modules. The base module contains the charting library while the data-adapter module will allow me to load my data or download anychart.min.js from the download page and then put it into your website folder.
3. Load the Data
In this tutorial, I am using a dataset of the sale of automobile companies. The dataset is available at carSale.csv .
AnyChart supports a lot of ways to set data to your charts. You can choose which one suits your task the best:
But requires the data to be presented in a particular format. They need the x-axis variable to be named as ‘x’ and y-axis variables to be named as ‘value’.
4. Create the chart
I will be placing the code for drawing my chart within the
anychart.data.loadCsvFile ensuring that the code to draw my chart is only executed once my data is loaded.
This is probably the most complicated step so if you are confused at first, don’t feel too bad.
getData(dataset) is a function that will be having the actual code for plotting the chart and the parameter ‘dataset’ is the manipulated data input required for plotting.
which results in:
And by the above steps, we have made our first JavaScript Line Chart.
Conclusion
Data visualization is a graphical representation of information and data. By using visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data.
The plot I made here is just for the purpose of getting started with visualization, if you want to make your plots more interactive and informative read more at anychart or drop a comment below.
