[Chicago-talk] using Google visualization

[Jay Strauss]

Hi Joel,

thanks for the example and info.  I can kinda read what you are doing
(I've never programmed in javascript).  Basically you are calling a
URL that delivers a JSON string, then you parse it in your Javascript
and load the data table with the parsed info.

Looking at the example in:
http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/?type=visualization#data_source_request

I think though if one was to send back the properly formated results, like:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/tq?key=pCQbetd-CptGXxxQIG7VFIQ&range=B1:D11&pub=1

with the proper header:
google.visualization.Query.setResponse({version:'0.6',status:'ok',sig:'1068688546',table:
bunch 'o JSON..

I can shove it right into the datatable without parsing like:

var data = response.getDataTable();

I'm going to play with this some more.

Thanks
Jay

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Joel Limardo
<joel.limardo at forwardphase.com> wrote:
> Perhaps you found a better solution by now but I figured I would respond
> anyway for kicks.
> I reworked my example to use an XMLHttp object to GET some JSON that would
> do the exact same thing except it a) returns the column headers and b) it
> returns the data in a single statement:
> data.addRows(myJSONObj.actualData);
> The JSON looks like this:
> {
>   "columns":["Sales","SalesValue"],
>   "actualData":[
>                  ["2001",100],
>                  ["2002",200],
>                  ["2003",300],
>                  ["2004",400],
>                  ["2005",800]
>               ]
> }
> Again, the actual example is
> here: http://www.bixchange.com/cgi-bin/bixchange/bixchange.cgi?pom=test-gsapi;iid=0001
> Some problems I noticed
> -------------------------------------
> My original idea was to use HTML::Template to push out JSON the same way one
> pushes out HTML. This didn't pan out because I wanted to format a JSON array
> with a TMPL_LOOP but it wound up producing an extra comma at the end.  That
> was causing a JSON parsing error in IE.  Apparently the inability to parse
> an extra comma at the end of the array definition is documented on the
> Google visualization website somewhere and was pretty annoying.
> All in all, the code example is pretty sloppy but works.  I borrowed much of
> the browser check code and I think it is rubbish so please don't copy any of
> that for anything important. I also assumed that the first column would
> always be text and the other columns of data would be numeric. I'm certain
> that you could come up with something better.  Lastly I used an eval() in
> the code to convert the server's response text to a JavaScript object. There
> is some concern on the web that this may be a vulnerability so I would
> research using better methods.
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Jay Strauss <me at heyjay.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > I would imagine the JSON example is pretty much the exact same thing
>> > except
>> > you just create a separate template to push out JSON and return this
>> > back to
>> > a static HTML file pointing to its URL.  This is pretty elementary
>> > stuff,
>> > however...perhaps I'm missing the problem here...?
>> > --
>> > Sincerely,
>> >
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> > Chicago-talk at pm.org
>> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk
>> >
>>
>>
>> So outside the fact that I'm a pretty elementary fellow, and your way
>> is perfectly fine, and I was starting to think I'd need to do
>> something similar, I thought based on my reading of the docs, that I
>> could be one of the K00L kids.
>>
>> I thought I could have my Javascript call the data source directly.
>> And there was some magic in the google javascript classes that would
>> take the CVS file that is returned and stick it in the data source
>> automagically.  That way my source web page that is delivered to the
>> browser wouldn't be thousands of lines long of:
>> data.addRows
>> data.addRows
>> data.addRows
>> ...
>>
>> Again, its very possible (dare I say probable) I'm total incorrect
>> about how this google visualization stuff works.  But it looks like
>> you can do what I'm talking about if the datasource is a google
>> spreadsheet.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Jay
>> _______________________________________________
>> Chicago-talk mailing list
>> Chicago-talk at pm.org
>> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk
>
>
>
>
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