Tutorial #1 G2 (The Grammar of Graphics) - Create Bar Chart

What Will I Learn?

• How to use G2 js (The grammar of graphics)
• How to create bar chart using g2
• Example codes using g2

Requirements

• Knowledge of HTML
• Knowledge of JavaScript

Difficulty

• Intermediate

Tutorial Contents

• Introduction
• Import G2 js
• Create bar chart

Introduction

G2, The Grammar of Graphics, is a data-driven visual language developed by the AntV Team. This javascript library can create different kinds of charts and graphs with a high level of usability and scalability and this will render your charts/graphs using canvas. G2 is a great tool to help developers for data visualization on their applications. In this tutorial, we will cover on how create a bar chart.

"With G2, users can describe the visual appearance of a visualization just by one statement." - AntV Team

Import

Before we can use the library, we have to import a javascript file on our application. We can just use a CDN or download the file in our local machine.

CDN: https://gw.alipayobjects.com/os/antv/assets/g2/3.0.5-beta.5/g2.min.js

Then, add the javascript file in our application using the script tag.

<script src="https://gw.alipayobjects.com/os/antv/assets/g2/3.0.5-beta.5/g2.min.js"></script>

Create Bar Chart

In this tutorial, we will create a bar chart that will display the number of users per age.

• First, we need to get/initialize the data for the bar chart. For that, we will just create a sample array of users with their corresponding age.

var data = [
        {"name" : "John", "age" : 20},
        {"name" : "Mary", "age" : 23},
        {"name" : "Susan", "age" : 22},
        {"name" : "Bernard", "age" : 19},
        {"name" : "Joe", "age" : 20},
        {"name" : "Elen", "age" : 22},
        {"name" : "George", "age" : 22},
        {"name" : "Michael", "age" : 21},
];

• Then, we have to group this array of users by age with a new count attribute. In this example, we will use the data-set library by AntV. But you can also use a vanilla javascript function to group the users by age.

• To use the data-set library, we have to import another javascript file.

<script src="https://gw.alipayobjects.com/os/antv/assets/data-set/0.8.5/data-set.min.js"></script>

• Then use the library to transform the data.

var dataSet = new DataSet();
var newData= dataSet.createView('test')
            .source(data)
            .transform({
                  as: [ 'count' ],
                  groupBy: [ 'age' ],
                  type: 'aggregate'
            });

• Or you can use vanilla javascript:

var result = [];

data.forEach(function (element) {
       var existingElement = result.filter(function (item) {
              return item.age === element.age;
        })[0];

        if (existingElement) {
             existingElement.count++;
         } else {
               var newData = {
                    age : element.age,
                    count : 1
                }
                result.push(newData);
           }
});

• Before we can create the chart, we have to create first an html container where we can display it.

<div id="container"></div>

• Then, we can initialize/create the G2 chart.

var chart = new G2.Chart({
          container: 'container', // container ID
          width : 600, // width of chart
          height : 600 // height of chart
});

• After that, we have to set the data source for the chart.

chart.source(newData);

• Then, we have to set the syntax for the position of the columns or what should be displayed on x and y axis of the chart.

chart.interval().position('age*count'); // (x*y)

• Lastly, RENDER the bar chart.

chart.render();

Result:

Demo