Yes VIrginia You Can Script Bar Charts in DesktopX

Or more aptly proof of concept of scripting bar charts

Thursday, April 5, 2007 by SirSmiley | Discussion: DesktopX

Took a break from working on some game scripts & actually found it easier to script a basic object based on The "Bar Chart" Sample code from ASP101. It's very rough. Put I've posted the script below.



Code: vbscript
  1. ShowChart Array(6, 10, 12, 18, 23), Array("P1", "P2", "P3", "P4", "P5"), "This is the Chart Title", "X Axis Label", "Y Axis Label"
  3. Sub ShowChart(ByRef aValues, ByRef aLabels, ByRef strTitle, ByRef strXAxisLabel, ByRef strYAxisLabel)
  4.     ' Some user changable graph defining constants
  5.     ' All units are in screen pixels
  6.     Const GRAPH_WIDTH  = 300  ' The width of the body of the graph
  7.     Const GRAPH_HEIGHT = 200  ' The height of the body of the graph
  8.     Const GRAPH_BORDER = 2    ' The size of the black border
  9.     Const GRAPH_SPACER = 5    ' The size of the space between the bars
  11.     ' Debugging constant so I can easily switch on borders in case
  12.     ' the tables get messed up.  Should be left at zero unless you're
  13.     ' trying to figure out which table cells doing what.
  14.     Const TABLE_BORDER = 0
  15.     'Const TABLE_BORDER = 10
  17.     ' Declare our variables
  18.     Dim I
  19.     Dim iMaxValue
  20.     Dim iBarWidth
  21.     Dim iBarHeight
  23.     ' Get the maximum value in the data set
  24.     iMaxValue = 0
  25.     For I = 0 To UBound(aValues)
  26.         If iMaxValue < aValues(I) Then iMaxValue = aValues(I)
  27.     Next 'I
  28.     'Response.Write iMaxValue ' Debugging line
  30. iBarWidth ="20"
  31.     ' Calculate the width of the bars
  32.     ' Take the overall width and divide by number of items and round down.
  33.     ' I then reduce it by the size of the spacer so the end result
  34.     ' should be GRAPH_WIDTH or less!
  35. 'iBarWidth = (GRAPH_WIDTH \ (UBound(aValues) + 1)) - GRAPH_SPACER
  36.     'Response.Write iBarWidth ' Debugging line
  39.     ' Start drawing the graph
  40. DesktopX.Object("lbl.ChartTitle").Text = strTitle
  41. DesktopX.Object("lbl.Yaxis").Text = strYAxisLabel
  42. DesktopX.Object("lbl.Yaxis").Rotation = -90
  43. '                    <TD ROWSPAN="2"><IMG SRC="./images/spacer.gif" BORDER="0" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="<%= GRAPH_HEIGHT %>"></TD>
  44. '                        <TD VALIGN="top" ALIGN="right"><%= iMaxValue %> </TD>
  46. DesktopX.Object("obj.Yline").Width = GRAPH_BORDER
  47. DesktopX.Object("obj.Yline").Height= GRAPH_HEIGHT
  50. ' We're now in the body of the chart.  Loop through the data showing the bars!
  51.                     For I = 0 To UBound(aValues)
  52.                         iBarHeight = Int((aValues(I) / iMaxValue) * GRAPH_HEIGHT)
  53.   '-Clones bars
  54.   If b = False Then
  55.   Dim z, strname
  56.   z=0
  57.     Do
  58.         z = z+1
  59.         strname = "bar" & z
  60.     Loop until DesktopX.IsObject(strname)=False
  61.         DesktopX.object("bar0").Clone strname, DesktopX.object("bar"&(z-1)).Left + iBarWidth + GRAPH_SPACER, DesktopX.object("bar0").Bottom-iBarHeight
  62.       DesktopX.object("bar"&(z)).Width = iBarWidth
  63.       DesktopX.object("bar"&(z)).Height =iBarHeight' %>" ALT="<%= aValues(I) %>"></TD>
  64.       DesktopX.object("bar"&(z)).Visible = True
  65.     End If
  67.         Next 'I
  68. '                    </TR>
  69. '                    <!-- I was using GRAPH_BORDER + GRAPH_WIDTH but it was moving the last x axis label -->
  70. '                    <TR>
  71. '                        <TD COLSPAN="<%= (2 * (UBound(aValues) + 1)) + 1 %>"><IMG SRC="./images/spacer_black.gif" BORDER="0" WIDTH="<%= GRAPH_BORDER + ((UBound(aValues) + 1) * (iBarWidth + GRAPH_SPACER)) %>" HEIGHT="<%= GRAPH_BORDER %>"></TD>
  72. '                    </TR>
  73. ' The label array is optional and is really only useful for small data sets with very short labels! %>;
  74. '            If IsArray(aLabels) Then
  75. '            For I = 0 To UBound(aValues)
  76. '                = aLabels(I)
  77. '                    Next 'I
  78. DesktopX.Object("lbl.Xaxis").Text = strXAxisLabel
  79. End Sub
  81. '--Clears Chart
  82. Function dxNewChart
  83. Object.SetTimer 100, 100   
  84. End Function
  86. Sub Object_OnTimer100
  87. Call clearChart
  88. End Sub
  91. Function clearChart
  92.   Dim i, strname
  93.   i=0
  94.     Do
  95.         i = i+1
  96.         strname = "bar" & i
  97.     Loop until DesktopX.IsObject(strname)=False
  98.     If i > 1 Then
  99.         DesktopX.object("bar" & (i-1)).delete
  100.   Else
  101.   Object.KillTimer 100
  102.   End If
  103. End Function
  104. '--End Clears

10 Reply 10 Referrals
ZubaZ
Reply #1 Thursday, April 5, 2007 11:14 PM
Nice use of the code block. 

Ummm . . how the hell does it work, what's it do?  How can I use it? 

(Thanks for sharing!!)

SirSmiley
Reply #2 Thursday, April 5, 2007 11:56 PM
I'll try to summarize better tomorrow but, for the most part it takes an array and dynamically creates a bar chart based on the dimensions of the Chart Area. Instead of reading the values into a table I charted each bar into an cloned object.

One immediate thought of using it would be something like Vad's Gallery Checker. Instead of displaying numbers you could display bars(numbers as labels) or a stacked bar chart with the second criteria being downloads today. They have a stacked bar chart script but, I want to get a handle on this then release into into the Scripts Gallery.

SirSmiley
Reply #3 Saturday, April 7, 2007 9:29 AM
Another screenshot. I've put the values into a tooltip and also working on a legend concept but, still learning more about arrays. This is a fun way to learn arrays...if there actually is a fun way to do that?

Some more ideas for usage:
- Poll Results streamed to your desktop
- Task/Project Status


ZubaZ
Reply #4 Saturday, April 7, 2007 12:54 PM
Pretty cool.

Can you comment on where the values are getting pulled from?
WIll data be able to be pulled from sources like Google Spreadsheet?

SirSmiley
Reply #5 Saturday, April 7, 2007 4:58 PM
At the moment the values are strictly coming from internal arrays.

Code: vbscript
  1. ShowChart Array(6, 10, 12, 18, 23), Array("P1", "P2", "P3", "P4", "P5"), "This is the Chart Title", "X Axis Label", "Y Axis Label"


The first being the values, the second being the labels, then the respective titles.

To answer your question; yes, you could pull data from the google spreadsheet. My immediate thinking is setting it up in a preferences menu, or a read from csv, databse, excel or xml.

Frogboy
Reply #6 Saturday, April 7, 2007 5:03 PM
Very cool!

ArileenDesign
Reply #7 Saturday, April 7, 2007 5:08 PM
Amazing WoW I'm always surprised by all the possibilities of DX Awesome work SirSmiley

RomanDA
Reply #8 Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:54 PM
VERY NICE!!

This is really great, need to see what can be done with it.

SirSmiley
Reply #9 Thursday, April 12, 2007 5:56 PM
Here's where it's at currently. Haven't even gotten to parsing data into the array yet!


SirSmiley
Reply #10 Wednesday, April 18, 2007 12:42 PM
So, I want to release something just to let coders have something to play around with. As I usually do, I over complicate things. I'm interested to know the basic thoughts/suggestions of what others would like to see?

Here's the features I'm working on.
-Sizable
-Horizontal/Vertical Option
-Legend that can be positioned right,left,up,down
-Dynamic chart (within limitations. eg. maximum of say 10?)

Here's a pic of something I've done for myself. It's based on fixed array dynamically updated via timer.


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