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In general the only thing you need to do is to make sure your PHP files
can include the required library files (as described below) and that
your PHP installation supports at least one graphic format, i.e. it
supports the "image" extension to PHP.
You can easily verify this by making sure that your installation of
PHP supports some of the 'imagecreate()' functions.
This means that you
must have a working GD-library together with PHP
before even thinking of running JpGraph. Please make sure you have
verion 4.02 or above of PHP since JpGraph will not
work with versions prior to PHP 4.02 that. Ideally you should use at
least PHP 4.1.x
If you want to use TTF fonts you must also make sure that your PHP
installation supports TTF fonts (either through FreeType 1 or FreeType
2 libraries). In additions to this you need at least a couple of TTF
fonts. In preparation of using TTF fonts with JpGRaph you must specify,
in jpgraph.php , where those font files can be found.
JpGraph uses a naming convention for the TTF font files in order to
be able to find the correct font files. You should therefore use the
font files that can be downloaded together with JpGraph.
In order to make sure that you have GD installed you could try by
running the following example which creates a very simple image using
just pure GD calls and outputs an image in PNG format.
header
("Content-type: image/png"
);
$im = @ImageCreate (
50, 100)
or die ("Cannot create a new GD
image.");
$background_color
= ImageColorAllocate
($im, 255,
255, 255);
$text_color
= ImageColorAllocate
($im, 233,
14, 91);
ImageString
($im, 1,
5, 5, "A Simple Text String", $text_color
);
ImagePng
($im);
The above script must work before you will have any
chance of getting JpGraph working.
In order for JpGraph to work you must adjust the cache and TTF
directory to suit your installation. By default the TTF directory is
"/usr/local/fonts/ttf/" and for the cache "/tmp/jpgraph_cache/". These
are defined as PHP defines at the top of jpgraph.php
Please make sure that PHP has write permissions to the cache
directory if you plan to use the cache feature. If not you will get a
"Can't write file xxx.yyy" error when you try to genereate a graph. You
can read more about how to use the cache in the chapter
Making sense of caching system in JpGraph
This is the base library files, which you must have
- Jpgraph.php, base library, always needed
To add plots to the graph you will need one or more of the following
files plot extension files dependiong on what kind of graph you need to
create.
- jpgraph_log.php, Plot extension to support logarithmic X and Y
scales
- jpgraph_line.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw various line plots
- jpgraph_bar.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw various bar plots
- jpgraph_error.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw various error
plots
- jpgraph_scatter.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw scatter and
impuls plots.
- jpgraph_spider.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw spider plots.
- jpgraph_pie.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw Pie plots
- jpgraph_pie3d.php, Plot extension. Needed to draw 3D Pie plots
- jpgraph_gantt.php, Plot extension. Needed to create gantt plots
- jpgraph_canvas.php, Plot extension to make it possible to draw
arbitrary graphic on a canvas.
- jpgraph_canvtools.php, Add on to the canvas graph to privide an
easier way to rdaw arbitrary shapes.
Per default the standard GD image library supports PNG graphic formats.
You will need to have that installed together with your PHP module for
this library to work at all. Please refer to PHP documentation on
specifics. Note that the newer versions of GD does not support the GIF
format due to copyright problems. Hence by default only PNG is
supported.
If you want JPEG support you will also need an additional library
for PHP, again please see PHP documentation for specifics. For most
practical purposes PNG is a better format since it normally achieves
better compression then GIF (typically by a factor of 2 for the types
of images generated by JpGraph). In comparison with JPEG format PNG is
also better for the type of images generated by this library. So, the
bottom line is, you should have a very good reason to choose any other
format then PNG.
By default the image format is set to "auto". This means that
JpGraph automatically chooses the best available graphic using the
preferred order "PNG", "GIF", "JPG".
Note: The reason that my site
(www.aditus.nu) only displays GIF images is that my Web hotell doesn't
support a newer version of GD which allows PNG format. One of lifes
small pains. This is the reason that I in most places just displays the
PNG images directly in the img tag on my site without going through
Jpgraph since the GIF format gives much bigger files and would make my
site slower.
Sidenote 2: To get background images
working with GD 2.0.1 you MUST enable Truecolor images by setting the
constant USE_TRUECOLOR to true. If you don't do this the background
images will just be a black rectangle. The bad thing with this is that
the antialias for Truetypes is broken using truecolor images in GD
2.0.1. This means you can't have background and TTF fonts in the same
image.
You can find a bug fix for GD 2.01 and the TTF problem
together with Truecolor images at
http://www.coupin.net/gd-freetype/
NOTE: This bug fix has _nothing_ to do with JpGraph and I
can't guarantee anything nor answer any questions regarding this
specific fix.
- Make sure your PHP is AT LEAST 4.04 (preferrable 4.1.1) and that you
have compiled support for GD library. You must make aboslutely sure
that you have GD working. Please run phpinfo() to check if GD library
is supported in your installation. Please not that JpGraph only fully
supports GD 1.x. There are known issues with GD 2.0.1 , see the notes
section below.
- Unzip and copy the files to a directory of your choice.
- Set up the directory paths in jpgraph.php where the cache directory
should be and where your TTF directory is. Note that Apache/PHP must
have write permission in your cache directory.
- Check that all rest of the DEFINE in the top of JpGraph.php is
setup to your preference. The default should be fine for most users.
(See also Note 5. below) Specifically check that the settings of
USE_GD2_LIBRARY reflects your installation, (should be true if you have
GD2 installed, false otherwise).
- Make sure PHP have write privileges to your cache directory if you
plan on using the cache feature.
- Some windows installations seems to have a problem with a PHP
script ending in a newline (This newline seems to be sent to the
browser and will cause a Header already sent error). If you have this
problem try remove all trailing newlines in the jpgraph* files
- It has been reported that PHP 4.06 under IIS has problem correctly
interpreting file paths. This can be solved by hardcoding the
CACHE_DIRECTORY and FONT_DIRECTORY constants directly in the code
instead of using the defined constants.
- Read (really!)
the JpGraph FAQ.
- Any PHP errors about function "imagecreate" does not exist indicates
that your PHP installation does not include the GD library. This must
be present.
- Any error about "parent::" undefined means that you are not using
PHP 4.02 or above. You _NEED_ PHP 4.02 or higher. This problem has also
been reported to sometimes occur under Windows. This problem has also
been reported by people running Zend-cache and is a bug in Zend. A
workaround is to move all files into one single file.
- If you don't get any background images (but rather a solid black
box) you are using GD 2.x but have forgotten to enable truecolor
support. Correct this by enabling the USE_TRUECOLOR define.
- If background images does not work make sure the settings of
USE_GD2_LIBRARY corresponds to your installation, i.e. If you don't
have GD2 then this define must be false!
- If you are running PHP 4.06 and get an error saying "GD was not
built with truetype support" you should know that this is a known
problem with GD+PHP 4.06. There are some workarounds (search the net!)
but it is really recommended that you instead upgrade to at least PHP
4.1.1 and configure PHP with --with-gd-native-ttf (Please also note
that the built in TTF uses point size for fonts whereas Truetype 2 uses
pixels.) Please DON't ask me how to resolve the GD Font problem. All
mail regarding this will go straight to /dev/null. Upgrade to 4.1.1!
- If you are running IIS and Win2k and get the error "Can't find
font" when trying to use TTF fonts then try to change you paths to UNIX
style, i.e. "/usr/local/fonts/ttf/". Remember that the path is absolute
and not relative to the htdocs catalogue.
- If you are using the cache please make sure that you have set the
permissions correctly for the cache directory so that Apache/PHP can
write to that directory.
- If you have problem building GD 2.0.1 for PHP you might want to try
the following tip from Rasmus L.
----<QUOTE >----
Build GD 2.0.1 with these two lines in your GD2 Makefile
CFLAGS=-g -DHAVE_LIBPNG -DHAVE_LIBJPEG -DHAVE_LIBFREETYPE
LIBS=libgd.a -lpng -lz -ljpeg -freetype -lm
Don't install the lib anywhere, just leave it in the GD-2.1.1
directory.
Then build PHP using a minimum of:
--with-gd=/home/
/gd-2.0.1
--with-freetype-dir=/use
--enable-gd-native-ttf
--enable-gd-imgstrttf
--with-jpeg-dir=/usr
--with-png-dir=/usr
--with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6
The above assumes you have freetype2 installed along with the
libjpeg and libpng libs under /usr
---- <END QUOTE >----
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