by: modules

What is the UI-Chart Directive?

The UI-Chart directive is an effective tool that empowers you to seamlessly incorporate jqPlot graphs into your application. It makes data visualizations easier and user-friendly, enhancing the ascetics of your application.

Prerequisites for Using UI-Chart Directive

Before diving into the usage of UI-Chart directive, you must meet some prerequisites. Essentially, you need to have knowledge and experience with three main technologies:

  • AngularJS;
  • jQuery;
  • jqPlot. 

These are the vital building blocks of this directive, driving its functionality and capabilities.

Quality Assurance Measures

A man programs on a laptop with a phone and tea beside him

To maintain the highest code quality and standard, robust testing measures using karma and jshint are in place. For smoother execution, you can utilize grunt by running the following commands:

npm install -g grunt-cli bower

npm install grunt

The karma task is programmed to launch Chrome for running tests. Ensure that Chrome is installed in your development environment or adjust the configuration in test/test.config.js.

How to Use the UI-Chart Directive

Dependency management for this directive is handled by Bower. To add angular-ui-chart as a dependency, you should append the following lines to your bower.json file: 

dependencies: {

    "angular-ui-chart": "latest"

}

Afterwards, execute bower install to copy the UI-chart files and its dependencies into your bower_components folder. Additionally, incorporate the necessary script files into your application: 

<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/jquery/jquery.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/jqplot/jquery.jqplot.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/angular/angular.js"></script>

Next, you should add the chart module as a dependency to your application module:

var myAppModule = angular.module('myApp', ['ui.chart'])

Making the Most of UI-Chart Directive Options

UI-Chart directive is extremely versatile. You can include it in your divs in multiple ways – as an element, an attribute, a class, or even a comment. Here are a few examples:

<ui-chart="data1"></ui-chart>

<div ui-chart="data2"></div>

<div class="ui-chart; data3"></div>

<!-- directive: ui-chart data4 →

In these examples, the data for $.jqplot comes from the evaluated value of the ui-chart attribute. The corresponding options for $.jqplot are retrieved from the evaluated value of the chart-options attribute, which are derived within the given scope.

Exploring the Full Potential of Chart Options

Close-up of hands typing on a laptop with code on the screen

The UI-Chart directive fully supports all options available for charts in jqPlot. The value for these options is given by the evaluated scope value on the chart-options attribute. Here is an example of how you can utilize these options: 

<ui-chart="data" chart-options="chartOptions"></ui-chart>

angular.module('myApp')

  .controller('DemoCtrl', function ($scope) {

    $scope.data = [

      ['Heavy Industry', 12],['Retail', 9], ['Light Industry', 14], 

      ['Out of home', 16],['Commuting', 7], ['Orientation', 9]

    ];

    $scope.chartOptions = { 

      seriesDefaults: {

        renderer: jQuery.jqplot.PieRenderer, 

        rendererOptions: {

          showDataLabels: true

        }

      }, 

      legend: { show:true, location: 'e' }

    };

  });

Seamless Integration of UI-Chart with Angular.js

The UI-Chart directive works smoothly with Angular.js, delivering interactive and real-time data visualizations for application users. By streamlining the creation of user-friendly and intuitive charts, it elevates the user experience to a new level.

Conclusion

Understanding the UI-Chart directive is key to creating compelling and user-friendly data visualizations in your application. This directive does not only enable you to integrate jqPlot graphs into your solution, but it also levels up your skill set by making you adept in AngularJS, jQuery, and jqPlot, the core technologies behind it. Additionally, incorporating the best practices for using the directive, such as carrying out quality checks using karma and jshint and managing dependencies with Bower, enhances your proficiency in developing well-structured and reliable applications. The UI-Chart directive, following the comprehensive guide, can be a game-changer for your application, taking it from ordinary to extraordinary with captivating and interactive data visualizations.