Overview
To include a chart created by FlashChart into your article you must
include the plugin tag {flashchart} with parameters
to describe the attributes of your chart and a chart-id
of your chart. You denote the end of the plugin with the end-of-plugin
tag {/flashchart}. The plugin tag has the format of
{flashchart parm1="value"
parm2="value" } chartid {/flashchart} .
Parameter values have to be enclosed by double quotes ("value")
and are valid only with lower case letters. The plugin has been setup
already via its plugin parameters with lots of attributes for your
charts (of course you can ovewrite those with your own setup or globally
change them for your needs). To give you an idea how it works - you
would request a chart via (settings below contain only mandatory
parameters - all other attributes will be set by default plugin
parameters):
"{flashchart
data="50,60,70,80,90,60|109,120,100,130,140,100"}
sample01{/flashchart}"
The "data"-tag describes your data for the chart. Each
number will have to be separated by comma. If you have more than one
datagroup you must seperate them by the or-sign "|"
(the sample above has two datagroups). To see the chart setup with above
settings {flashchart data="50,60,70,80,90,60|109,120,100,130,140,100" title="Sample 1" width="500" height="250" modal_chart="just click here."}sample_0001{/flashchart}
Plugin settings
FlashChart has already many chart attributes set, so that users have
less typing effort and no need to remember all supported values of
flashChart. All those defaults can (of course) individually be
overwritten (see description below). To change the defaults go to
"plugin manager" in your administrator backend and select
"FlashChart content plugin".
Parameters
Description of all FlashChart Parameters
Flashchart now with Version 1.2.1 supports 85(!) different configuration
options. To put detailed descriptions of all parameters into one single
webpage makes it a bit difficult to find a specific option. Therefore
I've restructured this reference to selectively provide the information.
Please select from form below a parameter - it will be shown on
selection.
News
Release 1.3.4
Code has been reworked and changed to be run with Joomla Version 4. This release has been successfully tested with Joomla Version 4.0 Beta3.
Important! With build-level 1.3.4.1 all media (javascripts, Images, stylesheets) have been moved to
directory
"/media/plg_content_flashchart".
Release 1.3.3
All interfaces to Joomla's framework have been changed to implement joomla's V3 php exploitation of PHP-Namespaces.
Release 1.3.2
Release 1.3.2 is an updated version of release 1.3.1. Code changes have been implemented to be able to run with PHP Version 7.
Release 1.3.1
Two new options "target_line" and "target_linecolor" have beeen added. "target_line" lets you display a line for a given value within coordinate system in addition to the grid of your chart. "target_linecolor" sets the color for this target line. If you omit this parameter, "target_linecolor" defaults to "grid_color".
Build Level 1.3.1.2 now supports logarithmic scaling of y-axis with paramerter "log_scaley". Also with this build content of tooltips has been made more consistant when parameter "x_label_truncate" is used.
Release 1.3.0
Code has been completely restructiured and performance improvements have been incorporated.
New in Release 1.2.2
Release 1.2.2 is mainly a "Security-Release" - e.g. in all php-scripts
will be checked, wether the Joomla Framework is used. This means that
every direct call outsite the framework will fail with an error.
With this release the interface to modal windows has been extended. With
parameter "modal_chart", you may now request a chart to be created and displayed in a modal window.
This function has been implemented with the bootstrap framework for modal windows.
The OFC Post/Get interface is no longer (for security reasons and
limited functionality) supported. In addition exception-handling for
database interfaces (MYSQL) has been recoded to support Joomla Version
3.x API.
New in Release 1.2.1
With this release you get a series of improvements and enhancements:
- New chart types - scatter charts:
- scatter_dot
- scatter_star
- scatter_box
- scatter_hollow
- Calculation and display of trend (trend line) for bar charts and
line charts
- Regression analysis for scatter charts:
- linear regression
- exponential regression (two types)
- use of own regression formulas
- Creation of chart's data via math formula
New in Release 1.2.0
- Flash-Object ("open-flash-chart.swf") has been
reprogrammed and enhanced with new features
- FlashChart supports actions on "mouse click events" (via
mouse clicks on chart elements various actions can be invoked and
executed).
- Pie charts may now have legends
- Radius of pie charts may be defined instead of using default of OFC
- You may place legends on right side of chart (instead of top of
chart)
- You now may create and use chart menues
- fixed problem with horizontal bar charts
(type="bar_horizontal") if you have multiple data series
- Data values may be displayed on bar and line charts.
- Added javascripts and functionality to create javascripts to be
used for click-events on chart elements or menues
- You may create charts instead of background color now with a
background image
- Instead manually rearrange data for stacked bar charts, flashchart
can do it for you on request
- Support for "standalone" web applications
- plus some code improvements
Changes
Parameter "c_color" changed to more meaningful name
"chart_colors". To activate pls. go to "plugin
manager" in your administrator backend and select "FlashChart
content plugin", then click "save" to activate new
setting.
Hints and Tips
Hints and tips
My Parameters seem to be O.K. but chart does not display or I
see an error message
Some problems of this kind are caused by Joomla!'s WYSIWIG editors. I
myself saw that some editors were too
"smart correcting"
my data entry. Blanks had been substituted by " " or
tab-chars or special chars like "=" or "/" got
replaced by a HTML-Coded character. To analyse these issues look at the
html-source with your Editor and correct it if required.
Print Chart
Since build 1.2.0.13 you may print your chart via context menu. Call
menu by right clicking into the chart.
Print entire Page
FlashChart gives you the ability to save/convert your charts to images.
This also solves the printing problem for browsers other than
Microsoft's IE. You only need to convert your displayed charts into
images (done with a click) and then printing works same as with IE. Or
you can now use your charts as normal images (e.g. copy/paste) when they
have been converted to image. Or you may use javascript "print_page"
(available with this release).
Notes on the stacked bar charts:
If you are requesting a side by side bar chart every value within a
datagroup will create one bar with same color. This behaviour is
different with stacked bar charts . Here every value within a datagroup
will create one stack with different colors on a single bar.
E.g. if you have data="Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr / 10,20,30,40 |
50,60,70,80" and request type="bar_cylinder"
you will see four side by side bar pairs. If you then
would request type="bar_stacked" with same
data, you would see only two stacked bars resulting in
wrong creation of your chart. To correct this you must rearrange the
data portion to: data="Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr / 10,50 | 20,60 |
30,70 | 40,80" (if data is coming from database this
rearrangment of data is done by flashchart).
With version 1.2.0 you may now rearrange your data via parameter rearrange_data="1"
on request instead of doing it manually.
Notes on the mysql interface:
With flashChart you can query data from tables within
the Joomla! database or other mysql databases. The creation of your
chart depends on data returned from database, and is therefore highly
depedant on your entered SQL-statements. The result of your query will
be handled by flashChart in a following way:
- If result contains only one data column from your query or
you have set parameter "sql_labels" to "0" data
goes directly to your chart
- If result contains two ore more data columns coming from your query
and parameter "sql_labels" is set to
"1" (this is the default) then:
- first column will be used for x-axis labels
- all other columns will be used for chart-data. Every single column
will build a single datagroup (and will be used for creation of side
by side bar-charts, stacked bar-charts or multi line-charts).
Support
Support
Though I did quite a lot of testing there might still be some bugs in
it. So take it easy! I'm willing to provide a correction ASAP if
possible! Please attach your flashChart parms, which caused the problem.
To contact me, please send email to
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. describing your problem or bug.
If you have any problems or suggestions please feel free to send email
to me or visit my
forum
If you like this plugin I would not be angry if you tell me and others.