Google Charts as Image

Question

I am trying to use Google charts to embed images of charts in the emails. So Each user will have a unique graph.

Can we use the API and embed a unique URL that will render the Charts and deliver an Image to the email Client.

Downs

the image charts feature from google charts works a treat, see datamakessense.com/kpi-emails-with-google-charts-url-parameters – Laural

Google Image Charts is now deprecated, see alternatives below – Disembody

Answer 1

It is possible to generate a url that will render an image of a chart using the Google Chart Wizard. However, that service recently (April I believe) because deprecated. It still works fine, but for a long term solution, you may have to come up with another method.

Edit

Another method would be to generate the image and save it to your server before sending the email. You can do this by having a page on your server dedicated to generating the chart by parsing a given slug, and when the chart is loaded send a POST request with the image data. You can access the data URI by using a hidden canvas (HTML5 is required) and the canvg javascript plugin:

chart_area = document.getElementById("chart_div").getElementsByTagName('iframe')[0].contentDocument.getElementById("chartArea");
svg = chart_area.innerHTML;
canvas = document.getElementById("hidden_canvas");
canvas.setAttribute('width', chart_area.offsetWidth);
canvas.setAttribute('height', chart_area.offsetHeight);

canvg(canvas, svg);
image_data_uri = canvas.toDataURL("image/png");

Salazar

Answer 2

You can get a PNG version of your chart using chart.getImageURI() like following:

Needs to be after the chart is drawn, so in the ready event!

var my_div = document.getElementById('my_div');
var my_chart = new google.visualization.ChartType(chart_div);

google.visualization.events.addListener(my_chart, 'ready', function () {
  my_div.innerHTML = '<img src="' + chart.getImageURI() + '">';
});

my_chart.draw(data);

Cleanthes

Answer 3

I had the same issue not so long ago and found out your question on SA. ince Google Image Charts is deprecated since 2012, I built https://image-charts.com to be a replacement of Google Image Charts in order to embed charts and graphs into emails (right click on the images bellow and checkout the URL):

https://image-charts.com/chart?chs=700x300&chxt=x,y&chl=2018|2017|2015&chd=t:60,40,20&cht=pa&chdl=Image|Charts|Rocks&chf=ps0-0,lg,45,ffeb3b,0.2,f443367C,1|ps0-1,lg,45,8bc34a,0.2,0096887C,1|ps0-2,lg,45,EA469E,0.2,03A9F47C,1&chan

https://image-charts.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=700x300&chd=t:10,25,30,40,12,48,100,20,47,29,84,30,27,50,70&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec|Jan|1:||50|100&chm=B,FCECF4,0,0,0&chco=E4061C&chdl=Coffee consumed&chma=0,0,20,10&chl=||||||such a very   big project!

https://image-charts.com/chart?chs=700x300&cht=gv&chl=digraph {a -> b[label="0.2",weight="0.2"];a -> c[label="0.4",weight="0.4"];c -> b[label="0.6",weight="0.6"];c -> e[label="0.6",weight="0.6"];e -> e[label="0.1",weight="0.1"];e -> b[label="0.7",weight="0.7"];}

Disembody

Answer 4

A little late to the party, but we just built https://ChartURL.com for this exact need because despite this question being almost 3.5 years old, the best solution out there until ChartURL was the deprecated Google Image Charts API :)

Hope this helps someone out!

Rhizotomy

Answer 5

To render Google Charts as an image, you can use Google Charts Node, an open-source project that uses Puppeteer to render the charts.

google-charts-node is available as an NPM library and can be used like so:

const GoogleChartsNode = require('google-charts-node');

function drawChart() {
  const data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([
    ['City', '2010 Population',],
    ['New York City, NY', 8175000],
    ['Los Angeles, CA', 3792000],
    ['Chicago, IL', 2695000],
    ['Houston, TX', 2099000],
    ['Philadelphia, PA', 1526000]
  ]);

  const options = {
    title: 'Population of Largest U.S. Cities',
    chartArea: {width: '50%'},
    hAxis: {
      title: 'Total Population',
      minValue: 0
    },
    vAxis: {
      title: 'City'
    }
  };

  const chart = new google.visualization.BarChart(container);
  chart.draw(data, options);
}

// Render the chart to image
const image = await GoogleChartsNode.render(drawChart);

Now you can save the image buffer as a file or return it as an HTTP response, etc. It looks like this:

The Google Charts node renderer is also available as a web service, as described here, so you can use it in any language besides JS.

If you're interested in using a more universal open-source chart format, you can also use QuickChart, a Chart.js render API.

Treponema