I wish to create a web dashboard for my team (day-to-day visualization). I am looking for some insight as to how to proceed (perhaps steps, best technologies, etc). I am confortable with jQuery, PHP, HTML/CSS, but I lack in terms of mySQL, which is probably needed in this case.
So, here are the requirements:
1/ I need to create an input interface where I would manually enter the data for the day (which could possibly be replaced eventually with API calls to the services, but I am making it manual for now)
2/ A database to capture the data
3/ A dashboard to display the info 3.1/ Various Chart types, 3.2/ * A DATE RANGE SELECTION TOOL 3.3/ The data itself, values only in a table
So as you can see, it is really Google Analytics-ish.
Can you help me figuring what technologies I should use, best practices, good resources such as tutorials, techniques, and examples.
Thanks in advance!
Jonas
you migh consider using HighCharts for this purpose. HighCharts can talk easily to any JSON interface, have a look here for examples: http://www.highcharts.com/documentation/how-to-use#live-charts
A sample Database call might work like this:
<?php
mysql_connect("hostname", "user", "password");
mysql_select_db("mydb");
$result = mysql_query("select * from mytable");
$obj = mysql_fetch_object($result);
mysql_free_result($result);
echo json_decode($obj);
?>
This would return a valid JSON from the server, to which you can point your highcharts and build the charts. Good Luck!
You can use embeddable chart widgets and update them automatically without SQL queries or database -- simply using Dropbox and CSV files (or FTP). Here is step-by-step guide how to do this: http://blog.explainum.com/2011/03/how-to-load-data-to-explainum-from.html
Example of a web-page with several widgets: http://blog.explainum.com/p/sample-widgets.html
The widgets have date range selection, zooming and comments linked to date ranges. Only line charts are available.