Charts in django Web Applications

Question

I want to Embed a chart in a Web Application developed using django.

I have come across Google charts API, ReportLab, PyChart, MatPlotLib and ChartDirector

I want to do it in the server side rather than send the AJAX request to Google chart APIs, as I also want to embed the chart into the PDF.

Which is the best option to use, and what are the relative merits and demerits of one over the other.

Answer 1

Another choice is CairoPlot.

We picked matplotlib over the others for some serious graphing inside one of our django apps, primarily because it was the only one that gave us exactly the kind of control we needed.

Performance generating PNG's was fine for us but... it was a highly specialized app with less than 10 logins a day.

Answer 2

Well, I'm involved in an open source project, Djime, that uses OpenFlashChart 2.

As you can see from our code, generating the JSON-data that OFC uses is a bit complex, but the output is very nice and user friendly, since you can add tooltips, etc. to the different elements.