How do I create graphs in Perl on Windows?

Question

How do I use Perl to create graphs?

I\'m running scheduled job that creates text reports. I\'d like to move this to the next step (for the management) and also crea

Answer 1

The Perl module Spreadsheet::WriteExcel allows you to create Excel workbooks that include charts.

You first have to create the type of chart that you want in Excel and then extract it out using a utility called chartex which is installed with Spreadsheet::WriteExcel.

The chart template can then be added to a new workbook and made to reference new data.

The documentation is here and there are several examples in the charts directory of the distro.

The mechanism is a little inflexible however and the it is sometimes tricky to get the exact result that you want.

Answer 2

Sorry for blowing my own trumpet, but you might be interested to have a look some slides I did for a short presentation about Graphing With Perl.

It mentions some of the suggestions here, but also gives you some code snippets that you might be able to use to help you get the most of what you're doing.

Answer 3

It depends to a great extent what sort of graphs (the look of them), and the data-source. I've had some good result by using the YUI Charts and feeding them some JSON style versions of the original source data. Rolling over a live chart for exact values is quite easy for example. There are plenty of examples on the developer pages.