How to resize a Flot graph when its containing div changes size

Question

I'm using the Flot graphing library jQuery plugin and I haven't found a good way to handle resizing the graph when it's containing <div> changes size (for example, due to window resizing). When handling the onresize event, I've made sure that the width and height of the containing <div>are updated to the correct size and then tried calling both setupGrid and draw on the plot object but with no effect. I've had some success with the approach of just removing and readding the containing <div> and replotting the graph in it. However, this seems to be prone to getting stuck in infinite resize event loops if I have to add other <div> elements to the document at the same time (like for tooltips for the graph) as I'm guessing those can trigger resize events as well? Is there a good way to handle it that I'm missing?

(I'm also using ExplorerCanvas for IE in order to be able to use Flot, if that might have anything to do with it. I haven't really tried in any other browsers yet)

Answer 1

I have found just binding to the resize event on the window and calling plot works really well. For example I have my data and options stored in variables on the page. Then I setup this on $(document).ready():

$(window).resize(function() {$.plot($('#graph_div'), data, opts);});

Answer 2

The latest version of the flot API docs, at least, describes a resize event which works as advertised.

resize()

Tells Flot to resize the drawing canvas to the size of the placeholder. You need to run setupGrid() and draw() afterwards as canvas resizing is a destructive operation. This is used internally by the resize plugin.

Answer 3

I just found a solution to this myself. I've wrapped my call to $.plot() so that may be the original cause of my specific problem but flot refused to resize in a timely manner even when I used the jQuery resize event. Here's my code change that fixed everything:

$(window).resize(function() {
    // erase the flot graph, allowing the div to shrink correctly
    $('#graph_div').text(''); 

    // redraw the graph in the correctly sized div
    $.plot($('#graph_div'), data, opts);
});