What method would be best to build this complex graph

Question

After 15 years doing UI development, there\'s very little I look at and think, \"how on earth do I do that.\" This is one of those times.

A graphic designer has sold

Answer 1

If it absolutely must be as compatible as possible, I would generate an SVG image and render it to PNG. This is not nearly as slow as it sounds for an image like this with so few points.

Here's a very quick, very dirty example. It assumes that you have the ImageMagick extension available though in a pinch you could dump the SVG to a file and exec() a command-line tool like rsvg. Obviously the "right" answer involves some sort of caching scheme for the rendered graph. Also, forgive me for not being more of a SVG ninja.

graph.svg.php:

<?php echo '<'; ?>?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" 
  "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg width="240" height="240"
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1">

  <g transform="translate(120,120) translate(0,15)">
    <polygon fill="none" stroke="green" stroke-width="10" 
              points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    <g transform="scale(<?php echo $fill['green']; ?>)">
      <polygon fill="green" stroke="green" stroke-width="10" 
                points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    </g>
  </g>

  <g transform="translate(120,120) rotate(72) translate(0,15)">
    <polygon fill="none" stroke="red" stroke-width="10" 
              points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    <g transform="scale(<?php echo $fill['red']; ?>)">
      <polygon fill="red" stroke="red" stroke-width="10" 
                points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    </g>
  </g>

  <g transform="translate(120,120) rotate(144) translate(0,15)">
    <polygon fill="none" stroke="yellow" stroke-width="10" 
              points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    <g transform="scale(<?php echo $fill['yellow']; ?>)">
      <polygon fill="yellow" stroke="yellow" stroke-width="10" 
                points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    </g>
  </g>

  <g transform="translate(120,120) rotate(216) translate(0,15)">
    <polygon fill="none" stroke="purple" stroke-width="10" 
              points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    <g transform="scale(<?php echo $fill['purple']; ?>)">
      <polygon fill="purple" stroke="purple" stroke-width="10" 
                points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    </g>
  </g>

  <g transform="translate(120,120) rotate(288) translate(0,15)">
    <polygon fill="none" stroke="blue" stroke-width="10" 
              points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    <g transform="scale(<?php echo $fill['blue']; ?>)">
      <polygon fill="blue" stroke="blue" stroke-width="10" 
                points="0,0 -50,68.82 50,68.82" />
    </g>
  </g>

</svg>

render.php:

<?php

$fill = array(
    'green'  => 0.5,
    'red'    => 0.8,
    'yellow' => 0.55,
    'purple' => 0.4,
    'blue'   => 0.75,
);

ob_start();
include('graph.svg.php');
$svg = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

$im = new Imagick();
$im->readImageBlob($svg);
$im->setImageFormat('png24');
$png = $im->getImagesBlob();
$im->clear();
$im->destroy();

header('Content-Type: image/png');
header('Content-Length: ' . strlen($png));
echo $png;
exit;

Output looks like this:

Answer 2

What about <canvas>? You can easily draw one triangle and then draw the others by just rotating the canvas 360/5 degrees.

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/Stijntjhe/dC6kX/

window.onload = function() {
    var ce = document.getElementById('ce');
    var c = ce.getContext('2d');
    c.translate(ce.offsetWidth / 2, ce.offsetHeight / 2);

    for(var pie = 0; pie < 5; pie++) {
        c.save();
        c.rotate(pie/5 * Math.PI * 2);

        c.beginPath();
        c.moveTo(0, -10);
        c.lineTo(-50, -80);
        c.lineTo(50, -80);
        c.lineTo(0, -10);
        c.lineWidth = 5;
        c.lineCap = 'square';
        c.strokeStyle = colors[pie];
        c.stroke();

        c.restore();
    } 
}

Becomes:

Cons: Maybe not cross-browser yet.

Answer 3

Unless I could find an implementation already written, I'd use Raphaël.

It will take significant work, but the end result should be very good.

Take a look at some of the demos, they're incredibly slick.

Raphaël currently supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Chrome 5.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

---

This seemed interesting, so I decided to implement it myself with Raphaël:

See: http://jsfiddle.net/2Tsjy/

It should work in "all browsers". The only part I didn't do was the text.

JavaScript:

var paper = Raphael("pentagon"),
    fullNum = [40, 53],
    borderColours = ['#329342','#9e202c','#f47933','#811f5a','#11496c'],
    fillColours = ['#74ae3d','#d01f27','#eaa337','#32133f','#2c7aa1'],
    triangles = [],
    border, fill, st, i;

for (i=0; i<5; i++) {
    border = paper.path(getPercentPath(0)).attr({
        'fill': borderColours[i],
        'stroke-width': 0        
    }),
    fill = paper.path(["M", 116, 123] + "l-44,61 88,0z").attr({
        'stroke': fillColours[i],
        'stroke-width': 6
    });
    triangles.push(border);

    st = paper.set();
    st.push(border, fill);
    st.rotate(i * 72, 116, 113);

    setPercent(i, 30+Math.floor(Math.random()*70));
}

function getPercentPath(percent) {
    var ratio = percent/100;
    return ["M", 116, 128] + "l-" + ratio*fullNum[0] + "," + ratio*fullNum[1] + " " + ratio*fullNum[0]*2 + ",0z";
}
function setPercent(i, percent) {
    triangles[i].attr({
        path: getPercentPath(percent)
    });
}


setInterval(function(){
    for (var i=0; i<5; i++) {
        setPercent(i, 30+Math.floor(Math.random()*70));
    }
}, 2000);

CSS:

#pentagon {
    width: 226px;
    height: 227px;
    border: 1px solid red;
    background: #fff;
    background: rgba(255,255,255,0.8)
}

HTML:

<div id="pentagon"></div>

Answer 4

I'd have to recommend RaphaelJS (see http://raphaeljs.com/). It is IE7 compatible, and you can do the triangles just fine: you need to do the math, but quite possible.

EDIT: look at http://www.chittram.com/editor.jsp for a quick sample of some of the shapes that can be done. That site is an interactive editor but the core capabilities you need are demonstrated.

Answer 5

I think if you have to do it in JS/CSS and Flash/HTML5 isn't an option, take a look at a handy trick of using triangles in CSS:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/css/slopes

And an alternative reference:

http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/css-triangle/

By setting the border thickness's of boxes cleverly, you can get any shape triangle you want, at any rotation. It's tricky to figure out, and I don't have code handy but it is possible.

You could nest triangles within each other (looking the sample picture I note it is composed entirely of triangles, the inner triangle is an inverted nest of the outer triangle) so I think it's perfectly possible, although that maths might get a bit tricky in regards to positioning and if you need the chart to be flexible (arbitrary numbers of triangles and sizes).