Graphs for the Perl
programmer?!
by Phil Whelan
Van.pm 9th July 2009

Resources
CPAN
http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/
barbie/graphing/
Van.pm mailing list!
External tools - Excel, Java...

Perl Modules
GD::Graph
Chart::ThreeD::Pie
Chart::Gnuplot
SVGGraph::Pie
Chart::Clicker

Graph::GD
Does the job
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Graph::GD
It ain’t pretty
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Graph::GD
Does 3D!!
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Graph::GD
It still ain’t
pretty
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Chart::ThreeD::Pie
Still uses GD
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Chart::Gnuplot
gnuplot is
powerful!
Images blatantly stolen from http://www.gnuplot.info/

Chart::Gnuplot
Still fugly for
simple graphs
Images blatantly stolen from http://www.gnuplot.info/

Work-arounds
I’ve done the past
Faking anti-aliasing
Required Resized
500x700 500x700
Rendered
2000x2800 use Image::Resize;
use GD::Graph::pie;

Work-arounds
I’ve looked at in the past
Using Java
Using Excel

SVGGraph::Pie
Vector graphics!
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

SVGGraph::Pie
Requires SVG
client browser
“As of 2009, all major Windows
browsers have committed to
some level of SVG support,
except for Internet Explorer
even as of version 8” -wikipedia
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Chart::Clicker
http://www.onemogin.com/clicker/
Nice graphs in
Perl!
Export as PNG,
SVG, PDF and
PostScript
Images blatantly stolen from http://www.onemogin.com/clicker/

Chart::Clicker
Example
code
Images blatantly stolen from http://birmingham.pm.org/talks/barbie/graphing/

Chart::Clicker
Conclusion
By far the best graphing Perl package
available
Portal graph images
Graphs are static once produced
Greater control over rendering graphs
Written in Perl - let’s hack!

flot.js
http://code.google.com/p/flot/
It’s not Perl?! - don’t hurt me, please
Supports IE6, IE7, IE8 (development
version), Firefox 2.x+, Safari 3.0+, Opera
9.5+ and Konqueror 4.x+

flot.js
So pretty. See the shadows?

flot.js
No JavaScript diploma required
HTML DIV
JSON
Data
Render

flot.js
Con - web-browser dependant
Con - cannot automate exporting
images as PNG, GIF easily

flot.js
Pro - quick to render
Pro - interactive, relative to user
Pro - does not look out-of-place in your
Web 2.0 application
Pro - low bandwidth and ser ver CPU-
time for ser ving up graphing

flot.js Demo
Zooming http://people.iola.dk/olau/flot/examples/zooming.html
MailChannels https://walla.wla.mailchannels.com/graph/walla/week

flot.js Conclusion
Ideal partner for Ajax to make graphs very
interactive
Not for exporting images (see Chart::Clicker)
Yes, it even works on your iPhone!

Conclusion Conclusion
Use Chart::Clicker for rendering on the ser ver
and producing static images
Use Chart::Clicker to protect your raw data
Use flot.js if you want to do some cool
interactive graphing within the browser
Use flot.js if you want your web designers to
control how your graphs look