How do you follow the best practices and standards for charts in Yii and PHP?

1 Why use Yii for charts?

Yii is a fast, secure, and powerful PHP framework that follows the MVC (model-view-controller) pattern and provides many features and tools to simplify web development. One of the advantages of using Yii for charts is that you can leverage its built-in components and extensions to handle data access, validation, caching, and rendering, as well as its support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and AJAX. Yii also has a large and active community that offers many third-party extensions and integrations for different charting libraries, such as Highcharts, Chart.js, Google Charts, and more.

2 How to choose a charting library?

When selecting a charting library for PHP and Yii, there are many factors to consider. These include the type and complexity of the charts you need to create, such as line, bar, pie, scatter, or map charts. Additionally, you should think about the level of customization and interactivity you want to achieve with colors, fonts, legends, tooltips, animations, etc. It is also important to consider the compatibility and performance of the library with different browsers, devices and screen sizes. Moreover, you should take into account the license and cost of the library if you are developing a commercial or proprietary application. Finally, look into the ease of installation and integration with Yii as well as the availability of examples and tutorials.

3 How to integrate a charting library with Yii?

Once you have chosen a charting library that suits your needs, you need to integrate it with Yii in order to generate charts from your data. Depending on the library, you may need to download and include its files in your web root directory, or use a package manager such as Composer or Bower to install it as a dependency. You may also need to register the library's assets, such as CSS and JavaScript files, in your Yii views or layouts, using the AssetManager component or an asset bundle extension. Alternatively, you can use a Yii extension that wraps the charting library and provides a convenient interface to create and configure charts using PHP code or widgets.

4 How to create charts from data in Yii?

Creating charts from data in Yii requires a few steps. Firstly, you need to define your data source, such as a database table, a query, a model, an array, or a JSON file. You then need to prepare your data for the chart by filtering, sorting, grouping, aggregating, formatting, or transforming it. Next, you have to create a view file that will display the chart using HTML and JavaScript code or a PHP widget. After that, you have to pass your data to the view file either directly or through a controller action. Lastly, you have to configure the chart options such as the type, title, labels, axes, series etc., using either JavaScript objects or PHP arrays and render the chart in the view file using either a JavaScript function or a PHP echo statement.

5 How to follow the best practices and standards for charts?

Creating charts from data is not only a technical task, but also a design and communication challenge. You want your charts to be accurate, informative, and engaging, while also being clear, consistent, and accessible. To achieve this, it's important to follow some best practices and standards for charts. This includes choosing the right chart type for your data and message, using appropriate scales and ranges for the axes, using meaningful labels and titles, using colors and fonts that enhance the visual appeal of the chart, using interactive features that add value to the chart, testing and optimizing the chart for different browsers and devices, and providing alternative text for accessibility.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?