I merged patches, refactored and released a new version of googlecharts, my Gem to create graphs using Google Chart API.

sudo gem install googlecharts

Here is a quick example of how the API works when dealing with a complex graph:

require 'gchart' # or require 'googlecharts' if you prefer to use the Googlecharts constant.
title = "Player Count"
size = "575x300"
data = [85,107,123,131,155,172,173,189,203,222,217,233,250,239,256,267,247,261,275,295,288,305,322,307,325,347,331,346,363,382,343,359,383,352,374,393,358,379,396,416,377,398,419,380,409,426,453,432,452,465,436,460,480,440,457,474,501,457,489,507,347,373,413,402,424,448,475,488,513,475,507,530,440,476,500,518,481,512,531,367,396,423,387,415,446,478,442,469,492,463,489,508,463,491,518,549,503,526,547,493,530,549,493,520,541,564,510,535,564,492,512,537,502,530,548,491,514,538,568,524,548,568,512,533,552,577,520,545,570,516,536,555,514,536,566,521,553,579,604,541,569,595,551,581,602,549,576,606,631,589,615,650,597,624,646,672,605,626,654,584,608,631,574,597,622,559,591,614,644,580,603,629,584,615,631,558,591,618,641,314,356,395,397,429,450,421,454,477,507,458,490,560,593]
Gchart.line(:title => title, :size => size, :data => data, :axis_with_labels => 'x,y', :line_color => '1e60cc', :axis_labels => [(1.upto(24).to_a << 1)], :max_value => 700, :custom => 'chg=10,15,1,0')

Which provides you with the url or image tag (or downloaded file) that produces the following graph:

This release works great with Ruby 1.9 and MacRuby, lots of bugs got fixed and some new features were added. Something a lot of people complained was that the gem was called googlecharts but that the main class was called Gchart. The problem was that I wrote my gem and called it Gchart and when I went to register the rubyforge project page, the name was already taken. In this release, I fixed this problem by allowing users to require and use the constant name they want, Gchart or Googlecharts. I also spent quite a lot of time cleaning up the old code which I was a bit ashamed of. Class variables are now removed and overall, the code should be a bit more sane.

The source code can be found in my GitHub accout and the documentation there.

I got a very good surprise when Takeo from Powerset & Stafftool hall of fame mentioned to me that Github picked one of my gems as the first featured project!

By the way, Takeo is also a Googlecharts contributor (+ a Merbist) and I had the honor to be the first one he ever forked!

Another Googlecharts user, Mokolabs from Graffletopia and iCal Share also decided to try Git and Github. In no time he had forked my project, made some modifications and sent me a pull request. w00t w00t!

To celebrate, we released version 1.3.4 with cleaner documentation, and enhanced features.

Documentation & Code Repo

Thanks to everyone involved in this project. And special kudos to the GitHub team for offering such an awesome service!

• The first thing you want to do is to install the gem

sudo gem install googlecharts

• The second thing you want to do is check the great brand new website for googlecharts

• The third thing you want to do is to recommend me on Working with Rails

• The fourth thing you want to do is to submit patches, suggestions etc…

• The fifth thing you want to do is to develop an awesome website using sexy googlecharts

This gem and its website have been made possible by DrNic and his awesome new gem generator and has been developed following the BDD approach thanks to RSpec

  sudo gem install googlecharts

Note that I’m working on merging this gem with another Google Charts gem. (see comments for more info about that)

I’ve been working on a Google Chart Gem that I have ready for a beta release but unfortunately, getting a new project setup on RubyForge takes forever. (apparently 72 hours)

It’s mainly a wrapper for the great GChart API, but instead of using a helper to generate your graphs, you can simply do:

  Gchart.bar(:title => 'My Mojo', :data => [1,2,4,67,100,41,234], :max_value => 300, :bg => 'c3c3c3')

  Gchart.line(:title => 'My Mojo',
              :data => [[1,2,4,67,100,41,234],[41,63,96,17,100,14,423]],
              :bg => '666666',
              :graph_bg => 'cccccc',
              :line_colors => 'ff0000,00ff00',
              :legend => ['morning','evening'])

  Gchart.pie(:data => [20,10,15,5,50], :title => 'SDRuby fu', :size => '400x200', :labels => ['matt', 'rob', 'patrick', 'jordan', 'ryan'])

As far as I know this is most complete Ruby wrapper for Google Chart API, but feel free to look around.