i need to make charts (pie and bar) and working with php data. the data is JSON encoded.
what are the best ways to generate charts. i am right now looking at Google Chart api. is there anything better (read: easier) than this?
google charts is nice, these are also excellent:
amcharts (amcharts.com)
open flash charts is one (http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/)
xml/swf charts (http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/)
amcharts and xml/swf charts both have free versions.
The PEAR Image_Graph package is a very powerful tool to create graphs.
Check out the samples here http://pear.veggerby.dk/samples/.
pChart ( http://pchart.sourceforge.net/) is a also pretty popular choice.
I've used it in the past with satisfaction.
If I have to find a new charting library/API I'd probably go with the Google Chart API, though.
Google Fusion is kind of new and does graphical representation of data. http://tables.googlelabs.com/Home
http://code.google.com/apis/fusiontables/
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-fusion-tables-api.html
If you're using jQuery, JQuery Google Charting makes using Google Charts API very easy.
Also, Flot is very nice tool for plotting x/y charts, it does not provides pie charts, and lacks the concept of categories/datasets, but otherwise the most impressive.