Ticket #1800 (closed enhancement: fixed)

Opened 2 years ago

Last modified 1 year ago

Add dynamic charting capabilities to mapserver

Reported by: thomas.bonfort@gmail.com Assigned to: dmorissette
Priority: high Milestone:
Component: MapServer C Library Version: unspecified
Severity: minor Keywords:
Cc: mapserver@geochem.de, thomas.bonfort@gmail.com, sdlime

Description (Last modified by dmorissette)

In order to output thematic maps, dynamic charting features in mapserver would be nice to have in mapserver. Such charts could include pie charts or bar graphs, for example.

Attachments

chart.diff (10.8 kB) - added by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com on 06/13/06 10:34:47.
intial functionnality for pie charts
chart-test.jpg (15.9 kB) - added by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com on 06/13/06 10:50:35.
image of generated output
bug1800.patch (7.9 kB) - added by dmorissette on 06/15/07 17:20:18.
Patch updated to work with current (4.99) SVN trunk
mapchart.c (8.6 kB) - added by dmorissette on 06/15/07 17:21:11.
mapchart.c updated for current (4.99) SVN trunk

Change History

06/13/06 10:34:47 changed by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com

  • attachment chart.diff added.

intial functionnality for pie charts

06/13/06 10:47:00 changed by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com

the proposed patch:
- adds a new layer type, namely "CHART"
- implements simple pie charts from values taken from the SIZE or SIZEITEM
values of each class belonging to the layer

open questions:
- the chart type (pie, bar, ...) and the size of each chart are specified in
PROCESSING attributes, even if only PIE types are implemented. maybe specific
attributes should be defined.
- the values of each class are  taken from the size/sizeitem of the
corresponding STYLE, which is semantically awkward.
- should the drawn charts be considered as labels or symbols, and cached to
avoid overlap?

an example of such a layer is:

LAYER
	NAME "ages"
	TYPE CHART
      CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
      CONNECTION "blabla"
      DATA "the_geom from demo"
	PROCESSING "CHART_TYPE=pie"
	PROCESSING "CHART_SIZE=30"
      STATUS ON
      CLASS
           NAME "population age 0-19"
          STYLE
		SIZEITEM "v1006"
		COLOR 255 244 237
	END
      END
      CLASS
          NAME "population age 20-39"
          STYLE
		SIZEITEM "v1007"
		COLOR 255 217 191
	END
      END
      CLASS
          NAME "population age 40-59"
          STYLE
		SIZEITEM "v1008"
		COLOR 255 186 140
	END
      END 
 END

note that the values "v1006" etc... aren't scaled to a specific value

06/13/06 10:50:35 changed by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com

  • attachment chart-test.jpg added.

image of generated output

06/13/06 10:53:10 changed by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com

  • cc set to thomas.bonfort@gmail.com.

08/23/06 02:13:13 changed by mapserver@geochem.de

  • cc set to mapserver@geochem.de.

10/04/06 16:30:21 changed by dmorissette

  • cc set to dmorissette@mapgears.com.

10/04/06 16:30:22 changed by dmorissette

I had a quick look at the patch and it seems to be missing the
msDrawChartLayerGD() function. Do you already have code to render charts? How do
you plan to do the rendering?

Doing basic pie charts is simple, but when it comes to other chart types and
properly labelling the values/axis or doing 3-d effects then it quickly becomes
more involved. There are already a few libs for rendering charts. Ideally we
should see if it's possible to reuse an existing chart rendering lib, that would
give us more powerful charting without having to reimplement everything ourselves.

10/06/06 14:20:03 changed by dmorissette

OWTChart is just a CGI wrapper around the gdchart library, which is where all
the chart rendering logic is located. Since the original gdchart library was too
messy to be usable, the OWTChart package includes a gdchart2 directiory which is
an adapted version of gdchart with most of the portability issues fixed. It
takes a struct with the chart config details as input and draws the chart to a
gdImage.

I think it would be possible to use the gdchart2 sub-directory from MapServer,
but then we'd need to package and maintain gdchart2 as a new package and I'm not
sure if that's worth the investment.

I was kind of hoping that there might be another C/C++ lib that has more life
around it and that could be used as an alternative, but I do not have any
pointer to offer at the moment.

All this being said, since you already have the code working then I do not have
a strong objection to using your code instead of a specialized lib.

11/29/06 02:33:04 changed by sdlime

  • status changed from new to assigned.
Dan: Have you installed and tried this out? I plan to this week...

Steve

11/29/06 05:31:26 changed by thomas.bonfort@gmail.com

rendering of small diameter arcs in gd is /horrible/ , especially with
even-sized diameters.
I'll work on the equivalent with imagemagick/agg when/if they are incorporated
with ms

11/29/06 10:18:06 changed by dmorissette

No, I haven't had time to play with this... it's all yours Steve.

06/15/07 17:19:14 changed by dmorissette

  • status changed from assigned to new.
  • owner changed from sdlime to dmorissette.
  • description changed.
  • cc changed from mapserver@geochem.de, thomas.bonfort@gmail.com to mapserver@geochem.de, thomas.bonfort@gmail.com, sdlime.

I have created MS RFC 29 for this:

http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-29

06/15/07 17:20:18 changed by dmorissette

  • attachment bug1800.patch added.

Patch updated to work with current (4.99) SVN trunk

06/15/07 17:21:11 changed by dmorissette

  • attachment mapchart.c added.

mapchart.c updated for current (4.99) SVN trunk

07/09/07 09:05:16 changed by dmorissette

  • status changed from new to assigned.

I have committed in r6279 the code from Thomas with a few fixes/changes to bring it up to date with MapServer 4.99.

What's left to do:

- End-user documentation.

And two future enhancements were derived from this ticket:

- #2136: Add ability to read chart size from an attribute - #2145: Add support for point/line layers (currently only polygon layers are supported).

We'll keep this bug open until documentation is done. Bugs or other enhancement discussions should get their own tickets.

07/12/07 13:55:50 changed by dmorissette

I had to change mapogr.cpp in r6299 to return the real geometry type for CHART layers as was done for postgis and mygis layers. None of the other input drivers seen to require this change.

07/30/07 06:23:22 changed by tbonfort

  • status changed from assigned to closed.
  • resolution set to fixed.

I created a howto documenting dynamic charting here: http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/dynamic-charting

07/31/07 10:45:22 changed by dmorissette

Thanks for the howto! I added a link to it in RFC-29.