Graphs and Charts are the easiest way to depict progress and data comparison. All over the world, billions of organizations, project their entire clientele sessions development, through charts. The development of technology has increased the amount of data collection. Graphs and Charts make understanding this massive amount of data in a small time.
Javascript, being the most resourceful and simple, has made this task effortless and now leads as the most powerful tool in designing graphs and charts. A variety of libraries have emerged in order to accomplish this errand.
Defined below, are the top 20 go-to javascript libraries in order to design various charts and graphs in the easiest way possible.
1. D3.js
This is an open-source project that provides the most dynamic features for developing visual graphics. This is a powerful javascript library which allows data-driven transformations to the document as it connects the Document Object Module (DOM) to the arbitrary data. D3.js is familiar with jQuery and its charts can be rendered using HTML, CSS, and SVG.
2. Chart.js
Chart.js is an open-source javascript library supporting eight charts Line, Bar, Radar, Doughnut and Pie, Polar Area, Bubble, Scatter, Area and has the ability to mix these charts. It is a small library that uses HTML5 Canvas for rendering its charts. Chart JS also supports time-series. It is a small javascript library that uses a canvas element for rendering the charts. In order to maintain scale granularity, it is highly responsive to window resize.
3. Shield UI
Shield UI charting components consists of 23 graphs and charts that cover all the major charting requirements. The main advantages of using Shield UI are integration, rich feature set, and wrappers. With over 70 widgets, it is extremely flexible and light-weight. In addition to standard jQuery plugins, it has wrappers for ASP.NET, JAVA, and ASP.NET MVC in all 23 chart types.
4. Highcharts
This is a popular javascript library for data visualization that is used by many of the world’s largest companies. It comes loaded with many animations and features that are eye-catching. Highcharts come with several pre-built graphs like spline, area-spline, bar, pie, area, scatter, etc. The charts are not only responsive but also mobile-friendly. There are wrappers for popular languages (NET, JAVA, Python), frameworks (Angular, Vue, React), iOS, and Android. It is compatible with old browsers and is free for personal use.
5. AnyChart
This is a light-weight and vigorous javascript library with charts entrenched and integrated. It has sixty-eight out-of-the-box chart types that can have various visual effects inserted and provides the feature to create our own chart type. AnyChart has a feature that allows saving charts in the image as a PDF, JPG, PNG, and SVG format. In order to learn about the library, AnyChart provides the user with five types of resources namely, documentation, API reference, Playground, Chartopedia, and FAQ.
6. C3.js
This is a D3 based reusable chart library that allows deeper incorporation of charts into web applications. It is an open-source tool that is comfortable, controllable and customizable. C3.js allows custom style by the class and uses a variety of API’s and callbacks to access the state of the chart. This feature allows the user to update the chart even after it has been rendered.
7. EJS Charts
This provides powerful, clean, and functional javascript charts created by Emprise Corporation. It provides quick publishing of data in a variety of formats. It is interactive, Ajax-driven, compatible, and easy to use. EJSCharts allow complete customization of charts with multiple series types of line, bar, area, scatter, pie, and function. Multiple charts series can be stacked and joined together to fulfil various charting needs. It is a pure javascript charting solution.
8. Canvas JS Charts
This is a high performance, highly responsive HTML5 library. It uses a simple API that ensures its efficient presentation. It supports thirty different types of charts namely line, column, bar, area, spline, pie, doughnuts, stacked charts, etc. All these chart types are well documented. This is a stand-alone, intuitive API that works on all modern devices. CanvasJS Charts also include dynamic/real-time charts. It permits the user to create rich dashboards that work across devices without compromising on maintainability or functionality. CanvasJS comes with beautiful and elegant looking themes and provides the ability to export the charts in image formats.
9. Chartist.js
This javascript library allows simple handling using convention instead of configuration. It provides great flexibility and usage of SVG. The styling of graphs and charts is done with CSS and all the controls are handled with javascript. The charts are interactive and the user can edit them on the fly. The main goal of Chartist is to provide a simple, lightweight and not an intrusive library. It is fully responsive, DPI independent, and customizable with Saas. It provides amazing animations with SMIL.
10. ApexCharts
ApexCharts is an open-source javascript library that allows developers to design interactive charts and graphs for web pages. It is responsive, interactive, and gives high performance. It is extremely dynamic hence making data interactive for the user. ApexCharts allow the application of annotations on both axes as well as on XY points. It provides smooth animations along with styling chart elements like adding gradients, images, patterns and drop shadows to the chart. It has more than ten built-in theme palettes to choose from or create a theme based on user choice. ApexCharts allow smooth transitions while loading dynamic data and changing data sets.
11. Google Charts
If the user wants to design simple charts that do not require complex configuration Google Charts is a great choice. It offers several built-in charts like area charts, bar charts, calendar charts, pie charts, geo charts and many more. It is free but with a limitation that since it is a web service it cannot be hosted locally. Each chart type comes with a tutorial with live examples. The tutorial includes API listings and code for the related features that are provided with the chart. Charts are customized using configuration options object and the data sets are populated using a DataTable class which can be used by all the charts. Each chart type has unique options which are listed in the type-specific tutorial.
12. ZingChart
ZingChart incorporates with angular, react, and other frameworks. It imparts a flexible and interactive environment for creating charts. This is a fast, scalable and modern product for chart creation. ZingChart uses AJAX, JSON, HTML5 in order to deliver to grand-looking charts quickly. Their product is used by companies like Apple, Cisco, Boeing, Microsoft and Adobe. It has more than thirty-five chart types and modules. These chart types and modules can also show data in real-time. It comes with a strong feature set and customization options. ZingChart reveals value without clutter and enables more granularities. It is embedded with a powerful Javascript API and is dependency-free.
13. Livegap charts
This is an online chart generator and allows the user to present data in the most expressive, influential and in a highly detailed manner. It offers a live preview and has a huge set of customization options. Livegap Charts remove the coding factor from creating charts and offer the facility to copy data from excel and spreadsheet. It makes sharing of charts effortless as there are options for saving the chart as images, as animation on the web page, and to save them online for faster and easier access. There is also an option for the charts to be shared via Facebook or as a URL. Livegap Charts offer free services for chart and graph designing as there is no enterprise pricing plan.
14. FusionCharts
This is one of the oldest javascript libraries that originally started as a flash-based chart plugin. It is a robust chart visualization library with over a hundred charts and over two thousand maps making it the most inclusive javascript library. Fusion Charts offers incorporation of all popular javascript frameworks and server-side programming languages. It is built for real-world data and works on all devices. FusionCharts provides interactive and responsive charts with extensive documentation. It has a consistent API and cross-browser support. In order to provide better compatibility and portability, it allows charts to be rendered using HTML5/SVG and VML. The charts can be exported in PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF formats. The chart gallery comprises of an abundant collection of examples and has a clean visual appearance.
15. Flot
This javascript plotting library is used for engineering and scientific applications. It focuses purely on jQuery. Flot is user-friendly, beautifully designed, and loaded with interactive features. It is open-source and free with panning and zooming features. Flot has a robust forum/mailing list in which users interact and provide help and guidance. It supports a twelve-hour date formatting, configurable grids, axis transformation support, and full API documentation. Flot can be used to analyze large data sets hence making it useful for plotting galaxies and other celestial objects. It can also be used in education, sports, health, gaming, finance, and IT technology. It is the oldest, most popular library and does not require much effort to operate.
16. Paper.js
Built on cryptographer and using HTML5 standards, paper.js is an inclusive open-source vector graphics scripting framework. Like D3, this also provides DOM which is extremely straightforward to work with. It uses a frame-based approach for rendering the canvas that makes animations design easier. Hence, paper.js is extremely good for making games. Paper.js is excellent for creating applications with complex behaviours with different elements performing different actions at a single instance. In paper.js behaviour is handled by objects and all the elements have the option of being created with hash properties.
17. amCharts
This is one of the most stunning and creative looking website available. It has both charts and geographical maps (map chart) with a strong SVG animation engine that creates movie-like scenes. The map chart package is most remarkable as it allows the user to create all sorts of interactive mapping with only a few lines of codes. This package includes a number of illustrious features like heat maps, map projections and coordinate shifting. amCharts uses a more declarative API instead of a simple configuration-based approach. This makes chart creation slightly different. In order to render charts in all the modern browsers, amCharts use SVG.
18. JSCharting
This library includes enormous amounts of charts including maps, Gantt, and stock. It includes a library of SVG icons and built-in maps of all world countries. A set of standalone micro charts can be rendered in any chart labels. In order to allow richer and interactive charts, JSCharting includes UI controls. The charts can be exported in JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF formats. JSCharting makes control and data visualization in real-time effortless. JSCharting has a strong and dynamic default. This means that it can automatically select the best setting for different scenarios. In more complex chart types, there are a few property settings that are needed to be configured by the user.
19. Plotly
This is a free and open-source high-level javascript library. Build on D3.js and WebGL, it can be used to create various charts and graphs from 3D to statistical. It supports twenty chart types, including SVG which can be used to create dynamic presentations or embedded in websites. It is the first scientific javascript charting library for the web. By abstracting charts to a declarative JSON structure, it can be used as a browser-based charting library for MATLAB and Python. It has extensive API documentation with good animation and uses React. It allows the user to connect to their databases and use excel spreadsheets
20. Recharts
This is a composable charting library chart with reusable and decoupled React components. It is built using D3.js and SVG. Recharts is extremely reliable since it is made on top of SVG elements with a slight dependency on D3. It is a powerful library which is highly responsive. Recharts has a very intuitive API and is built for React from scratch. This library is componentized, comfortable and customizable. It is extensible, striking and fast.
Also Read: Top 50 Node JS Packages
