GWT Visualization Example - Annotated Time Line Chart Tutorial

If you are a server-side Java developer such as myself, I am sure you want an easy way to create AJAX based application but pure JavaScript (ECMAScript) is not your strong skills. The beauty of JavaScript is that it runs on any web server, no need for a servlet container or anything of that sort.

So, I have been writing AJAX based UI using the GWT framework for the past year and half. I am still not a web developer but I understand enough CSS to spice up my site. Anyway, I am writing this tutorial because I think that the GWT Visualization team, even tough they did a good job, over complicates the creation of charts in their tutorial. I was trying to create an Annotated Time Line chart so I looked up my previous code I wrote for the GWT Portlet JSR-168, see here. I also decided to run a search (don't be evil, Google is your friend) to try to find different examples and hopefully some nice custom charts. First of all, based on the search result; I thought that some of examples, including Google's own, were confusing and over complex. Most examples uses AJAXLoader to load the Visualization API, but you shouldn't have to use this. This is the simplest way to create a GWT Annotated Time Line Chart.



1. Using your favorite development tool with support for GWT framework, create a new Java web application, you can export the compiled JavaScript later to a non-based web application, if you use an IDEW you should code-completion support.

2. Make you sure you have included the GWT Visualization API module in your classpath.

3. In your project source code root directory, you should <AppNamexxxx>.gwt.xml file. make sure to add teh following line to it in order to make the  module available to your application.

<inherits name="com.google.gwt.visualization.Visualization"/>

4. In order to keep this tutorial short and straight to point, I have included the chart creation code in my <AppNamexxxx>EntryPoint.java class

---


public class MainEntryPoint implements EntryPoint
{
    
    
    /**
    * Creates a new instance of MainEntryPoint
    */
    public MainEntryPoint()
    {
        
        
    }
    
    
    
    /**
    * The entry point method, called automatically by loading a module
    * that declares an implementing class as an entry-point
    */
    public void onModuleLoad()
    {
        
        Runnable onLoadCallback = new Runnable()
        {
            
            
            public void run()
            {
                
                DataTable data = createHistoryTable(result);
                AnnotatedTimeLine.Options options = AnnotatedTimeLine.Options.create();
                options.setDisplayAnnotations(true);
                options.setDisplayZoomButtons(true);
                options.setScaleType(AnnotatedTimeLine.ScaleType.ALLFIXED);
                options.setLegendPosition(AnnotatedTimeLine.AnnotatedLegendPosition.SAME_ROW);
                AnnotatedTimeLine atl = new AnnotatedTimeLine(data, options, "600px", "200px");
                RootPanel.get().add(atl);
                
            }
            
            
            
        }      
        ;
        VisualizationUtils.loadVisualizationApi(onLoadCallback, AnnotatedTimeLine.PACKAGE);
        
    }
    
    
    
    // This method will create the Data used by the chart
    private DataTable createHistoryTable()
    {
        
        DataTable data = DataTable.create();
        data.addColumn(AbstractDataTable.ColumnType.DATE, "Date");
        data.addColumn(AbstractDataTable.ColumnType.NUMBER, "Price");
        data.addColumn(AbstractDataTable.ColumnType.NUMBER, "Low");
        data.addColumn(AbstractDataTable.ColumnType.NUMBER, "High");
        data.addRows(5);
                  
            DateTimeFormat dtf = DateTimeFormat.getFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
            data.setValue(0, 0, dtf.parse("2009-11-21"));
            data.setValue(0, 1, 100);
            data.setValue(0, 2, 120);
            data.setValue(0, 3, 90);


            data.setValue(1, 0, dtf.parse("2009-11-22"));
            data.setValue(1, 1, 90);
            data.setValue(1, 2, 110);
            data.setValue(1, 3, 100);


            data.setValue(2, 0, dtf.parse("2009-11-23"));
            data.setValue(2, 1, 100);
            data.setValue(2, 2, 180);
            data.setValue(2, 3, 80);


            data.setValue(3, 0, dtf.parse("2009-11-20"));
            data.setValue(3, 1, 130);
            data.setValue(3, 2, 100);
            data.setValue(3, 3, 130);
          

            data.setValue(4, 0, dtf.parse("2009-11-19"));
            data.setValue(4, 1, 130);
            data.setValue(4, 2, 170);
            data.setValue(4, 3, 150);
            
        }
        return data;  
    }  
}


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Don't forget to import all the necessary classes and voila!

I hope this will save you some time in creating your charts.