Project: Image Chart

Alexander Lowe

Feb 27, 2015 • 1 min read

Since Google Image Charts is no more, I needed an easy way to generate and embed charts into my emails. I present Image Chart - a self hosted web service to generate charts from URLs.

Google Image Charts was a great way to generate a chart image using only URL querystring parameters. It was useful for creating ad hoc charts and for embedding charts into email.

Image Chart Example

This project allows you to have a self hosted Google Image Chart like interface that is robust with attractive charts. It is easy to install, just install the prereqs, clone the repo, npm install, then run app.js in node.

You can find the Image Chart Project on GitHub. Sorry, there is no demo, but it's easy to get a local version running. It is written on Node.js, uses Redis (optional) for caching images, and charts are generated with D3.js. It uses Phantom.JS to render the chart and capture the image.

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