As a developer, the need to display data charts and graphs on your web site/service presents two major generation options: server-side, or client/browser-side. - The primary benefits of server-side chart generation are: completely consistent display across browsers (even IE can handle showing images), and re-use of the chart image outside the browser, e.g. in generating PDF documents. - The primary benefit of client/browser-side chart generation is: interactivity (if needed), or generally more dynamic behavior, e.g. immediately updated charts with a user's new input. webplotlib could be for you if you want Python server-side chart generation, providing a convenient and modular package/API. It is GPL licensed. Installation ------------ NOTE: Even though I wrote this package for a Django context, it can easily be used without/outside Django. See below for more details. webplotlib has these direct dependencies: 1. Numpy, which Matplotlib also depends on. You can install this globally (e.g. sudo pip install numpy) or just for the relevant virtualenv. For its full functionality you'll want to install system dependencies (like Fortran), e.g. on Ubuntu, the packages libatlas-base-dev, gfortran, gcc, g++. 2. Matplotlib - you can get this via your OS packaging system (likely too old), from PyPI, or from source. The latest version, 1.0.1, is ostensibly on PyPI, but pip pulls down the wrong version currently (as of May 2011; not pip's fault, see this `SO discussion`_), unless you do the following: pip install -f http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.0.1/matplotlib-1.0.1.tar.gz matplotlib You can also install this globally or locally to one virtualenv. Note that Matplotlib has numerous system dependencies depending on usage: e.g. for server usage on Ubuntu, install packages: python, python-dev, libpng12-dev, libfreetype6-dev. 3. py.test, if you want to run the unit tests. .. _SO discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3555551/why-does-pip-install-matplotlib-version-0-91-1-when-pypi-shows-version-1-0-0 With dependencies installed (and within the relevant virtualenv), install webplotlib from PyPI with: :: pip install webplotlib Or you can install from source via github. Usage ----- While I wrote webplotlib to work with a Django project, currently there are no direct dependencies on Django, so you can treat webplotlib like any other Python package and call it directly.
from https://github.com/limist/webplotlib
