Plotalot brings your website to life with beautiful, live, responsive charts.
You must be able to write the SQL queries to retrieve the data you want to plot, but if you can do that, Plotalot will take the data and use the powerful Google Charts API to produce many different kinds of charts (and tables) with numerous formatting options.
You can display charts on your site using the free Plotalot component. This page uses the Plugin to embed charts in an article for more flexibility.
Numerous Chart Types
Line, scatter and area charts. Horizontal or vertical stacked or grouped bar charts. Pie charts, gauges, timelines, Gantt charts, bubble charts. Organisation charts. Candlestick and combo charts. Tree charts. Geographical charts.
Countless Options
Charts legends can be at the top, bottom, left or right. Grids are optional. Titles and axis labels can be simple text or SQL queries. Axis limits can be automatic, fixed, or SQL generated. And a lot more . . .
Tables and Single Items
Plotalot can show your data as an HTML table, or as a Google Charts table with interactive features like dynamic sorting and paging.
Single Items merge seamlessly with article text: Good evening, it's 10:15 PM GMT.
Responsive Charts
Google Charts are not natively responsive, but with the Plotalot Plugin, they are. And with CSS you can control exactly how they respond.
Try resizing this page.
Dynamic Updates
Plotalot uses Ajax to update charts without re-loading the page.
You just specify the refresh interval and Plotalot does the rest.
Advanced Features
Chart SQL can include GET or POST data, or logged-in user data. There's also a fully documented API that can be built in to your own code to add powerful charting to the back or front end of your own Joomla extensions.
Data Sources
Plotalot retrieves data from databases using SQL, or from CSV files, or HTTP sources. If you don't know SQL the user guide includes a quick introduction, and most people should be able to write simple queries quite quickly. SQL is a learning curve, but it's a useful skill and very powerful. Once you master it you can collate and present data in ways that would not be possible with simpler tools.
This sample area chart is plotting some simple time functions, updating every 15 seconds, using fixed data "hard coded" in the chart definition. For convenience, most of the sample charts installed with Plotalot use this "hard coded data" technique.
You can query the local site database or an external database using any of the database drivers supplied with Joomla. These currently include MySql, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and SQLite, although not all are supported on all servers.
Another Example
This example does retrieve data from the database. It's a Geo Chart showing population statistics (from Wikipedia). Hover over the countries to see their population.
More Examples
The pie chart shows the ten most popular articles on the site. The SQL here is simply "select `title`, `hits` from `#_content` order by `hits` desc limit 10". Since this data changes rather slowly, it would be wasteful to run the query every time the page is requested, so the Plotalot Plugin allows charts to be cached. You just specify the cache time in seconds, and the plugin uses the cached chart until it expires. These charts are re-generated about every two hours.
This bar chart shows daily downloads, using data from our MediaShop component which manages sales and downloads on the site. The graph shows some historical temperatures.
Responsive Tables
Plotalot can draw tables in three different ways. In each case, data is retrieved using a SQL query, but the characteristics of each type of table are different. Standard HTML tables work well for tables that don't have many columns and can fit within the width of small mobile devices.
For larger tables like the one on the right, Plotalot provides responsive tables that use CSS to control the layout. On larger screens this table is formatted like a "normal" table, but on narrower screens, the format changes completely. Try it.
Plotalot can also draw tables using the Google Charts API. Google tables are not responsive, but they have additional features like dynamic sorting, scrolling, and the ability to download the data to a local file.
The Google Charts API
Plotalot uses the Google Charts API (previously known as the Google Visualization API). Charts are rendered in the browser using Javascript and chart data is never sent to Google.
Older versions of Plotalot used the Google Image Charts API (previously known as the Google Charts API) that was deprecated in 2012. We no longer support the Google Image Charts API.
Language Support
At the front end, Plotalot is completely language independent. Charts appearing on the site are entirely configured by you.
Several back end translations are included, but most are in need of updating. New translations are welcome.
Getting Started
The Plotalot Component is free and fully functional with no restrictions on its use. The back end of the component includes a chart list and a chart editor, where you develop and maintain your charts. Some sample charts are included, which you can use to learn about the system, or use as starting points for your own charts. When you are ready to show a chart on the front end you create a menu item of type Plotalot and list the charts you want it to show. A Plotalot menu item can show one or more charts with text above and below them.
If you need to build more complex pages (like this one) you can buy the Plotalot Plugin. The Plugin can embed charts anywhere in any article. The plugin also provides additional advanced features as detailed on the Plotalot Download page.
Like all our products, Plotalot is fully documented in a free PDF user guide, so you never have to wait for answers or search forums. Our user guides are free to download, so you can check it out before you buy.
Please click the "Buy & Download" button at the top of the page for the free downloads, and purchase options for the plugin.
For Advanced Users
Advanced users can pass Get and Post variables into SQL queries to customise charts. If you know HTML you can build forms in articles that include input fields and select elements.
For PHP programmers, Plotalot also has an API that lets you create charts programmatically. Most Plotalot users don't need to use the Plotalot API. You only need to use the API if you are building charts into your own Joomla components, or if you need to create charts with complex dynamic filters. The API is documented in a separate document, the Plotalot Developer Guide. An example Joomla Component, Simple Plot is also available. You can see Simple Plot working here.