It has been some time since I last needed to dynamically create a bar or line chart from an arbitrary data source (in my case a database of network configuration events). Several years back I used Martien Verbruggen's
GIFgraph module -- I see he has moved on to GD::Graph. Has a clear leader in terms of usability and attractive functionality emerged among the CPAN graph and chart modules?
UPDATE: Thanks to all those who responded; I checked out GD::Graph3d and found it very much to my liking. I decided to rebuild libgd on my Solaris 5.9 system to include the libpng and FreeType libraries, and I had quite a bit of difficulty before I realized that I needed to provide the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to my CGI script in order for it to find the proper GD libraries to produce the PNG images. I hadn't realized that environment variables need to be explicitly passed or set within Apache
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/env.html. I ended up with dynamically-generated PNG images with support for TrueType fonts, which pleases me greatly. Here's a simple test script that produces a 3d bar, 3d line and pie chart from sample data, if anyone is interested:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use GD::Graph::bars3d;
use GD::Graph::lines3d;
use GD::Graph::pie3d;
use CGI qw/:standard :html3 center/;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use strict;
print header;
print start_html(-title=>"3D Graph Test");
my @data = (
["Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat"],
[ 1203, 3500, 3973, 2859, 3012, 3423, 1230],
[ 819, 2500, 4901, 429, 1604, 2199, 700],
[ 4412, 1500, 2211, 1394, 4501, 2290, 50],
);
my @graphs = ();
my $width=300;
my $height=200;
print "<center><table border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=10><tr>";
$graphs[0] = new GD::Graph::bars3d( $width, $height );
$graphs[1] = new GD::Graph::lines3d( $width, $height );
$graphs[2] = new GD::Graph::pie3d( $width, $height );
$graphs[0]->set (
bar_depth => 10,
bar_spacing => 10,
overwrite => 2,
cumulate => 1,
shading => 1 );
$graphs[1]->set (
line_depth => 5,
shading => 3 );
for (my $i=0;$i<3;$i++) {
$graphs[$i]->set (
x_label => 'Day of the week',
y_label => 'Number of hits',
zero_axis => 1,
box_axis => 0,
title => 'Daily Summary of Web Site',
);
$graphs[$i]->set_legend("Frank", "Bob", "Sue");
$graphs[$i]->set_title_font('/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso_8859_13/X
+11/fonts/TrueType/LucidaTypewriterBoldOblique.ttf', 8+$i*2);
$graphs[$i]->set_legend_font(GD::Text::gdTinyFont);
my $timeval = time() + $i;
my $gd = $graphs[$i]->plot( \@data );
my $image_stream = $gd->png();
unless (open(GRAPH,">/up/web/data/testgraph${timeval}.png")) {
die "Can't open /up/web/data/testgraph${timeval}.png: $!";
}
print GRAPH $image_stream;
close(GRAPH);
print qq|<td><img src="../data/testgraph${timeval}.png" alt="Test
+chart"></td>|;
}
print "</tr></table></center>";
print end_html();