Charts are an indispensable part of any data visualization work. People can grok visual representation of data easily than a textual variety. Today there are a huge number of free chart libraries available to display visualizations on websites. Below is a small list of some of the libraries available for displaying charts using php.
1. Visifire
output format: Silverlight
license: GPL 3.0 / Commercial
Visifire is a set of open source data visualization components – powered by Microsofts Silverlight technology. Visifire can be used in both WPF & Silverlight applications. Using the same API, charts in both Silverlight & WPF environments can be created within minutes. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails or just simple HTML. The website also includes a chart designer for you yo play with. The components also support excellent animations.
Features:
- Visually Stunning Animated Charts
- Single API to both Silverlight & WPF
- Embed into Desktop or Web Applications in minutes
- Real time Charts / Live Update
- Tiny footprint
- Enterprise grade features
- Microsoft Expression Blend compatible
- Dual License – Open Source & Commercial
2. FusionCharts – PHP Charts
Output Format:Interactive Chart / Image / PDF
License:Free / Commercial
FusionCharts is a client side charting solution. Most of PHP charting components are server-side charting libraries that generate only static images of charts and gauges without any interactivity but FusionCharts Suite XT isa good client-side solution that uses JavaScript to generate interactive charts, gauges and mapsin your PHP application or website.
Using FusionCharts PHP Classyou can connect to dynamic data sources (like JSON, XML, MySQL), produce the chart data, and generate the required HTML and JavaScript code, which can be easily embedded in any web page.
FusionChartsSuite XT can also connect to dynamic sources of data using server side scripts like ASP, ASP.NET C#, ASP.NET VB.NET, PHP, J2EE, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion etc.
Key Features:
- The most comprehensive charting library with over 90 charts and 900 maps.Loved by 23,000 customers in 120 countries.
- Rich interactivity – Tooltips, clickable legend keys, easy drill-down, effortless zooming and scrolling, and one-click chart export to JPG, PNG and PDF.
- It works with all your web and mobile browsers, including even IE6.PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones or Android devices.
3. PHP/SWF Charts
output format: Flash
license:Free / Commercial
PHP/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful PHP tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic data.
Use PHP scripts to generate or gather the data from databases, then pass it to this tool to generate Flash (swf) charts and graphs. Any other scripting language (ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.) can be used with XML/SWF Charts (the XML version of the same tool.)
Some features:
- Web charts and graphs from dynamic data
- Live and interactive chart updates without reloading the web page
- Clickable charts, and drill-down
- Animated transitions
- Printable charts
- Simple and flexible chart generation
- Quality Flash graphics
- Supports PHP 3, 4, and 5
- Supports unicode text to display special characters and any language
4. pChart
output format: Image
license:GNU General Public License
pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create visually appealing charts. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week.
5. amCharts
output format: Flash / Image
license:Free / Commercial
One of my favorites. AmCharts is a toolbox of Flash charts for your websites. AmCharts can automatically extract data from simple CSV or XML files, or they can read dynamic data generated with PHP, .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, Perl, ColdFusion, and many other programming languages.
Key features:
- Animated or static
- Value axis can be reversed
- Linear or logarithmic value axis scale
- Predefined or custom bullets
- Custom description for any data point
- Clickable columns/bars (can be used for drill-down charts)
- Values can be converted to formatted durations
- Gradient fills
- Value indicator plug-in
- Axis values inside the plot area
Common amCharts features:
- Platform-independent
- Can be exported as an image
- Can be controlled via JavaScript
- Settings and data can be passed directly from an HTML file
- Custom image or Flash (animated) backgrounds
- Unlimited labels
- Rotated labels and axis values
- Data can be automatically reloaded with a preset frequency
- Format any balloon text
6. ezGraph component
output format: SVG / Image
license:BSD license
eZ components are an enterprise ready general purpose PHP components library by eZ systems. As a set of quality independent building blocks for PHP application development, eZ components help you speed up your php development.
The Graph component enables you to create line, pie and bar charts. The output driver mechanism allows you to create different image types from each chart, and the available renderers make the chart output customizable from simple two-dimensional charts to beautiful three-dimensional data projections.
Update: 2014
Some recent additions include ChartLogix, a commercial PHP charting library that includes many commonly used data visualizations. The charting library is included in one self-contained PHP file, which makes it easier to use and embed in your applications.
Have you seen AnyChart? http://www.anychart.com
it works with PHP also
http://www.anychart.com/products/anychart/docs/platforms/php/
What do you think about it?
Thanks for the list, I have a project coming which may require charting, so this comes in handy =)
AnyChart does not provide a free version (Trial is available though), so it was not included.
Thanks. I will refer back to this list when I need charting tools.
A charting library that is fun too, but client-side (javascript) : http://code.google.com/p/flot/
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Out of curiosity, the bullet point that PHP/SWF Charts can support “printable charts” got me curious – where is this functionality, exactly? I was unable to find it on their site’s documentation. I prefer the fluidity of the Flash charts, but printing might be a requirement that would be necessary at a later time.
Try this link:
http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.php?menu=Reference&submenu=Printing
Worth bookmarking. Tried all, would settle for Visifire. Not because it is mentioned first in the list. It’s very simple to use, even has advanced features that a chart seeker craves for.
There is a new, advanced free charting engine called Style Chart. Maybe you can take a look.
Nice list but I won’t call most of them “charting libraries for PHP”. amCharts, Open Flash Charts, etc. are “just” Flash-Charting libraries that are useable with PHP. Otherwise you could add google Charts, Flot, etc., too as for most of them there are wrappers available for PHP.
But none the less thanks for compiling the list.
Have you looked at libchart, http://naku.dohcrew.com/libchart , I found it easier than Google Charts, JChart, etc.
The API and setup are so easy and excellent. It generates charts as png images hence you can export and save them
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Great list, however I am surprised you missed php Chart Director, http://www.advsofteng.com/. Ive tried many different ones however this one is really great. It works on your backend and creates images so that you do not require JS or Flash to see the charts (and also makes caching of images possible). It has a comprehensive list of charts aswell, look at their demopage for full list. Did I mention the multi charts, you may mix all charts into one super-chart!
You forgot http://www.fusioncharts.com/free/ which is a nice charting system as well. It is XML driven flash. And works well either standalone or via php or a bunch of other languages.
What do you think about Flycharts from http://flycharts.net? It works with php too. It also has version which is free for non-commercial use.
Thanks for the update. Its a nice addition to the already listed packages.
This is very useful for php website development
Thanks, this is really useful. Another one I’m surprised you haven;t mentioned is ChartLogix at http://www.phpcharting.com
I used this on a project recently and it worked great. The learning curve is almost nil. It does not have all the features and different types of charts but what it does it does really well.
Hello Sameer,
How could you miss jpGraph ? It’s among the oldest…
http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/
mohammad nadim attari
+1 to nadim. IMHO jpgraph is the oldest and most famous one.
Thanks! And one more GREAT API, which runs under different platforms and is free for private use here (http://www.flycharts.net/)
Great post, but what is the best non-flash version?
TL
fusioncharts example can be found here.
https://techpituwa.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/how-to-populate-chart-with-mysql-database-in-fusion-charts/
Thanks for sharing your research.
I just want to add another free alternate framweworks.
1) Razor Flow (http://razorflow.com)
2) Charts 4 PHP (http://chartphp.com)
Both provide easy PHP wrappers. Razorflow seems very rich and extensive.