Google Chart Tools - Free Dynamic Graphs and Charts

If you are a website developer who searches for data graphs and charts software, you should know that there are many solution to choose from. Usually website designers search for easy to implement charting software. The first free chart & graphs service that you probably know is Google Chart Tools. Google give supplies API service for chart and graphs generation. But there are some other professional and highly customizable software that you should consider using or buying. Anyways, I think that you should consider using Google Chart Tools, not just because its free, but because it has large stock of graphs and chart, static and interactive ones, and the implementation is very simple.

Google Chart Tools

Probably on of the most popular charting tool for creating data visualizations for your website using API functions. Google chart tools offer both image and interactive charts. The interactive charts uses Google Visualization API and image charts utilizes Google Chart API. Google also offers the 'Live Chart Playground' , which is a live chart design tool for testing charts online.

Google Chart API dynamically generates static chart image by excepting a URL string through GET request and replying with a chart/graph image which you can download for online or offline usage. The most obvious advantage of using Google Chart Tools, is ease-of-use and the ability to create advanced, high-quality chart and graphs with little experience in HTML.

Here are the available charts in Google Chart Tool API:

• Bar Charts
• Box Charts
• Candlestick Charts
• Compound Charts
• Dynamic Icons
• Formulas
• Google-O-Meter Charts
• Line Charts
• Map Charts
• Pie Charts
• QR Codes
• Rader Charts
• Scatter Charts
• Venn Charts

Every one of those type of charts has its own API implementation and dedicated use. There are many options for customizing the appearance, like using different colors, labels, decide whether you want a 3D chart or 2D, line styles, line fill, grid lines, shape markers etc.

Using the Interactive chart as an embedded data visualization solution for your website is becoming more popular. For example, when you want to implement data drill-down capabilities, using interactive charts is a must. Further more, you can capsulize special designed data chart as a gadget using Gadget Extension of the API.

There some limitations for the Google Chart Tools service that you should know about, like: Google limits the chart images to 300,000 pixels and X\Y axis values will not be calculated automatically, so you need to calculate the values and pass it to the URL GET request yourself.

Using Google Chart Tools' web services is done using Google Visualization API wire protocol and the response is blazing fast. You can find in-depth reference guide for the Visualization API on Google code. Also you can enjoy viewing the various charts online by type and view presentation of them online. Some of the chart on the API gallery are: Area chart, annotated time line, bar chart (interactive/image), bio heat map, column chart, dygraphs, geo map, pie chart, etc. There are also code samples that you can browse online in the documentation.