Open the index.php file in your ChartBuilder folder. Select
the "New Chart" option from the left hand tree view on screen.
ChartBuilder can support multiple databases if you have defined
them in the databases.php file. They will appear in the
list to choose from.
Once you have chosen a database, the tables and views will be
displayed in the data source dropdown.
ChartBuilder supports numerous visualizations, from ordinary
column and line charts to org charts, geo-maps, and more.
Each type of visualization will have unique
options available to configure. For common chart types like
bar/column/line charts, here are the key options:
- X-Axis
- Select a column from your table/view that will be the horizontal
X-axis. If your x-axis column is a date type, check the Date
Driven box. If your database column is a date stored as
an integer, check the Integer Date box.
- Series
- You can optionally specify a series by which to group your
data. When you include a series, ChartBuilder will break
out your data by each series. If your data source contains
multiple columns that you want to use as series, please refer
to this page on
how
to transform individual columns into a single series column.
- Geo Field (geocharts only)
-
The field that contains geographic data. Data must
follow one of the following:
- A country name as a string (for example, "England"),
or an uppercase ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 code or its English
text equivalent (for example, "GB" or "United Kingdom").
- An uppercase ISO-3166-2 region code name or its
English text equivalent (for example, "US-NJ" or "New
Jersey").
- A metropolitan area code. These are three-digit
metro codes used to designate various regions; US codes
only supported. Note that these are not the same as
telephone area codes.
- Value
- The field that will be used to calculate the value to display
in the chart. For example, Order Amount might be the field,
and the operation would then be "sum" or "average."
- Operation
- Choose the type of operation to aggregate your values.
Options are sum, average, count, maximum, and minimum.
- Time Grain (line/bar/column charts)
- For date-based graphs, the grain of time to display (day,
week, month, year). Use month (##) to display the numeric
representation of the month.
- Folder
- Optionally specify the name of the folder to store this
chart within. Useful for organizing the tree view of the
chart list.
Advanced Options
- SQL Criteria
- Optionally enver any valid SQL Where criteria (must be MySQL
valid) to add to the chart query definition. Click on
the "Helper" option for assistance with constructing your
SQL criteria. Note: It is not necessary to
include "where" in the criteria, it will be added
automatically.
- Legend
- Position of the legend. Select "None" to
hide.
- Line Type (line charts only)
- Type of line to display (straight, rounded)
- Point Shape (line charts only)
- Select any special shape for points on the line.
- X Axis Title and Font Size (line/column/bar
charts only)
- The title text and font size for the X axis.
- Y Axis Title and Font Size (line/column/bar
charts only)
- The title text and font size for the Y axis
- Format
- Optionally enter a valid MySQL number format to display
values. For example, $#,###. Click on the
"Helper" option for assistance with constructing your format
criteria.
- Drilldown
- Optionally choose another chart (or the same chart) that you want to drill down to when the user clicks on a line, bar, or pie segment. Be sure that the chosen drilldown chart has the same column(s) that will be used to drilldown or your user will receive an error message when they click on the drilldown.
- Description Text
- Optionally provide descriptive text to be displayed at the
bottom of the chart to help users understand the content of
the chart.
ChartBuilder can support multiple MySQL databases. Edit the
databases.php file stored in the /config folder using the example
in the file as a guide.