Rails Charts

One more gem to build nice charts for your Ruby on Rails application.

With it you can build various types of charts Apache eCharts library (v. 5.4.0). This gem simplifies interface and adding few helpers to start adding charts in your app with just a few lines of code.

What you can build with it:

area chart
line chart
bar chart
donut chart
pie chart
radar chart
calendar chart
candlestick chart
funnel chart
gauge chart
parallel chart
sankey chart
scatter chart
stacked bar chart
custom chart

In most cases with one line of code you can have a nice chart. The idea of this gem was inspired by Chartkick gem which is great and allows you to build charts very quickly. It works best in cooperation with groupdate gem. Unfortunatelly it's missing many needed types of charts or other customization options.

This implementation have more options and similar "interface" for building charts.

Installation

Add gem to your application's Gemfile:

gem "rails_charts"

Then execute:

$ ./bin/bundle install

You can install ECharts with installation command

$ ./bin/rails rails_charts:install

or do it manualy

Sprockets

add eCharts in main JS bundle, e.g. app/assets/javascripts/application.js

//= require echarts.min.js
//= require echarts/theme/dark.js

add your first chart e.g.

<%= line_chart User.group(:age).count %>

customize charts if needed. See available options or official documentation.

Webpack / esbuild

Run:

yarn add echarts

For Rails 7

In app/javascript/application.js add this:

import * as echarts from 'echarts';
import 'echarts/theme/dark';

window.echarts = echarts;

For Rails 6

In app/javascript/packs/application.js add this:

import * as echarts from 'echarts';
import 'echarts/theme/dark';

window.echarts = echarts;

add your first chart e.g.

<%= line_chart User.group(:age).count %>

customize charts if needed. See available options or official documentation.

Importmaps

change config/importmap.rb

pin "echarts", to: "echarts.min.js"
pin "echarts/theme/dark", to: "echarts/theme/dark.js"

add eCharts in main JS

import "echarts"
import "echarts/theme/dark"

add your first chart e.g.

<%= line_chart User.group(:age).count %>

customize charts if needed. See available options or official documentation.

Options

<%= line_chart data, {
  width: '250px',
  height: '250px',
  theme: 'dark',
  class: 'chart-container-class',
  style: 'padding: 10px'
} %>

Available options:

width: specify width of the chart
height: specify height of the chart
theme: specify theme of the chart (available themes examples https://echarts.apache.org/en/download-theme.html)
class: specify container's CSS class
id: specify container's ID
style: add inline style
debug: for gem development useful if you want to pause somewhere in the code
vertical: applicable for some types of charts
code: to see output code what is generated to see the chart, useful for debugging
options: {...}, nested hash, specify additional eCharts options

Apache eCharts options - https://echarts.apache.org/en/option.html#title.

If you need to format tooltip (or other javascript function as an option) you can pass a JS function, but you need to wrap it like:

  options: {
    tooltip: {
      valueFormatter: RailsCharts.js("(value) => '$' + Math.round(value)")
    }
  }

Charts

All examples available in https://github.com/railsjazz/rails_charts/tree/main/test/dummy/app/views/home. You can see more examples if you clone this repo and start a dummy app.

Every chart has a built in default configuration for tooltips, or other options (sample https://github.com/railsjazz/rails_charts/blob/main/lib/rails_charts/line_chart.rb#L64-L75). This is just to simplify usage of this gem. In the future the plan is to have it configured in initializer.

Area Chart

<%= area_chart User.distinct.pluck(:role).map{|e| {name: e, data: User.where(role: e).group_by_day(:created_at).count} } %>

Line Chart

<%= line_chart User.group(:age).count, class: 'box',
  options: {
    title: {
      text: "People count by age",
      left: 'center'
    },
  }
%>

Bar Chart

<%= bar_chart User.group(:role).average(:age),
  class: 'box',
  theme: 'sakura',
  options: {
    series: {
      barWidth: '50%'
    },
    tooltip: {
      valueFormatter: RailsCharts.js("(value) => '$' + Math.round(value)")
    }
  }
%>

Calendar Chart

<%= calendar_chart Commit.for_calendar_chart,
  class: 'box',
  options: {
    visualMap: {
      show: true,
      min: 0,
      max: 40,
      orient: 'horizontal'
    },
    calendar: [{
      range: '2021',
    },]
  }
%>

Candlestick Chart

<%= candlestick_chart({
    '2017-10-24' => [20, 34, 10, 38],
    '2017-10-25' => [40, 35, 30, 50],
    '2017-10-26' => [31, 38, 33, 44],
    '2017-10-27' => [38, 15, 5, 42]
  },
  class: 'box',
  theme: 'roma',
  options: {
    xAxis: {
      axisTick: {
        alignWithLabel: true
      }
    }
  })
%>

Funnel Chart

<%= funnel_chart User.get_funnel_sample_data,
  class: 'box',
  height: '400px',
  options: {
    title: {
      text: 'Demo',
      left: 'center'
    }
  }
%>

Gauge Chart

<%= gauge_chart User.get_gauge_sample_data,
  class: 'box',
  height: '400px',
  options: {
    title: {
      text: 'Demo',
      left: 'center'
    }
  }
%>

Parallel Chart

<div class="box">
  <%= parallel_chart [
    [1, 2, 1, "Ruby"],
    [2, 3, 2, "JavaScript"],
    [3, 1, 3, "C#"]
  ], {
    options: {
      parallelAxis: [
        { dim: 0, name: '2019', inverse: true, minInterval: 1, min: 1, nameTextStyle: { fontSize: 16 }, axisLabel: { fontSize: 16 } },
        { dim: 1, name: '2020', inverse: true, minInterval: 1, min: 1, nameTextStyle: { fontSize: 16 }, axisLabel: { fontSize: 16 } },
        { dim: 2, name: '2021', inverse: true, minInterval: 1, min: 1, nameTextStyle: { fontSize: 16 }, axisLabel: { fontSize: 16 } },
        { dim: 3, type: "category", name: 'Language', data: ["Ruby", "JavaScript", "C#"], inverse: true, nameTextStyle: { fontSize: 16 }, axisLabel: { fontSize: 14 } },
      ]
    }
  }
  %>
</div>

Donut Chart

<%= donut_chart User.group(:role).count,
  class: 'box',
  options: {
    legend: {
      bottom: '0'
    },
    emphasis: {
      itemStyle: {
        shadowBlur: 10,
        shadowOffsetX: 0,
        shadowColor: 'rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)'
      }
    }
  }
%>

Pie Chart

<%= pie_chart User.group(:role).count,
  class: 'box',
  options: {
    legend: { orient: 'vertical', left: 'left' }
  }
%>

Radar Chart

<%= radar_chart User.get_data_for_radar_chart,
  class: 'box',
  options: {
    legend: {
      data: ['Average Salaries', 'Maximum Salary'],
      orient: 'vertical',
      left: '20%'
    }
  }
%>

Sankey Chart

<%= sankey_chart({
    data: [
      {name: 'Ruby'}, {name: 'HTML'}, {name: 'JS'}, {name: 'Good'}, {name: 'Bad'}, {name: 'CSS'}, {name: 'PHP'}, {name: 'Frontend'}, {name: 'Backend'}
    ],
    links: [
      {
        source: 'Ruby',
        target: 'Good',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'HTML',
        target: 'Good',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'JS',
        target: 'Good',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'CSS',
        target: 'Good',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'PHP',
        target: 'Bad',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'Good',
        target: 'Backend',
        value: 1
      },
      {
        source: 'Good',
        target: 'Frontend',
        value: 3
      },
      {
        source: 'Bad',
        target: 'Backend',
        value: 1
      },
    ]
  }, {
    options: {

    }
  })
  %>

Scatter Chart

<%= scatter_chart [
    { name: 'John', data: User.random_scatter_chart(500, 200) },
    { name: 'Bob', data: User.random_scatter_chart(500, 1000) },
  ],
  {
    class: 'box',
    options: {
      xAxis: {
        name: 'Distance'
      },
      yAxis: {
        name: 'Sales'
      },
      legend: {
        data: [
          {name: 'John'},
          {name: 'Bob'},
        ]
      },
    },
  }
%>

Stacked bar Chart

<%= stacked_bar_chart [
    { name: 'high priority', data: Account.high_priority.group_by_month(:created_at, format: "%b %Y").count },
    { name: 'low priority', data: Account.low_priority.group_by_month(:created_at, format: "%b %Y").count }
  ],
  {
    options: {
      title: {
        text: "Popular vs Unpopular"
      },
    },
    class: 'box',
    vertical: true
  }
%>

Custom Chart

<%= custom_chart {...raw JS options ...} %>

Contributing

You are welcome to contributes. Some open tasks:

support turbo streams?
add more specs
add more examples to the dummy app
customization, options overides, default values?
every "5sec" refresh
remote data
how to access chart from JS
better documentation how to specify theme, locale, etc
more examples with data structure
add github actions
add info about initializer and it's configuration
specify info about default configs per chart
add support for CSP similar to https://github.com/ankane/chartkick/blob/master/lib/chartkick/helper.rb#L55
example of how to build multiple-chart charts

Development and testing

test/dummy/bin/rails s - to start dummy app.

rspec - to run specs.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Gem is using https://echarts.apache.org/ to build charts.

rails_charts

Development

Runtime