Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Google Launches a Chart API

Google recently released a URL API for charting.

What's a URL API, you ask? Well you open an image to a specially formatted url, and google returns you a chart. You can do some pretty amazing things with this API.

Check out these samples:

The last one was created with this url:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:Uf9a&chs=200x100&chl=A|B|C|D

The urls are a little bit cryptic as you can tell, but this allows you to use one source for charting regardless of your language or platform. A .NET wrapper is sure to spring up in the next couple days that will allow you to take advantage of this API with a more structured format.

Update: Boy did I underestimate the community. Chris Pietschmann already created an ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control to leverage the Google Chart API in .NET.

I'm wondering how they are able to handle all of this. Not only is it a lot of traffic to handle (but they're obviously pros at that by now) but it takes a significant amount of CPU cycles to generate a graph like that on the fly. How do they keep their response times so quick?

Filed under: Technology | Tools | WebDesign

Comments [7] | Trackback

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:34:25 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

It's obvious to me now that Google has long since sold it's soul to the devil to accomplish the quickest response times on the web. I'm convinced that's the only possible way they have an endless supply of bandwidth :)

Sean Chambers | dkode8AT NOSPAMgmail dot com

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 7:02:25 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Man that's hot.

James Thigpen

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:05:39 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Excellent post dude! Btw, I went back to your posts on nhibernate - i think you've done a great job at explaining what it is and how it works. Keep it up man!

Reuben | reubenAT NOSPAMtamu dot edu

Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:20:39 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Someone has actually already put the API to good use, if you want to see an example of an application--it's kind of dorky but pretty cool. Really illustrates the power and simplicity of the API. Also, the proprietary algorithm they use here is amazingly accurate! It's at http://lovegraph.thefootnotes.com -- worth checking out. By the way, love the blog, keep up the good work!