highcharts

What is highcharts?

The highcharts npm package is a charting library that allows developers to create interactive and responsive charts for web applications. It supports a wide range of chart types and features, including line, area, bar, pie, scatter, and more complex types like stock, maps, and Gantt charts. Highcharts is designed to work across all modern browsers and is compatible with various frameworks and platforms.

What are highcharts's main functionalities?

Line Charts

This code sample demonstrates how to create a basic line chart using Highcharts, showing the growth of solar employment in various sectors over time.

{"title": {"text": 'Solar Employment Growth by Sector, 2010-2016'},"subtitle": {"text": 'Source: thesolarfoundation.com'},"yAxis": {"title": {"text": 'Number of Employees'}},"legend": {"layout": 'vertical',"align": 'right',"verticalAlign": 'middle'},"plotOptions": {"series": {"label": {"connectorAllowed": false},"pointStart": 2010}},"series": [{"name": 'Installation',"data": [43934, 52503, 57177, 69658, 97031, 119931, 137133, 154175]},{"name": 'Manufacturing',"data": [24916, 24064, 29742, 29851, 32490, 30282, 38121, 40434]},{"name": 'Sales & Distribution',"data": [11744, 17722, 16005, 19771, 20185, 24377, 32147, 39387]},{"name": 'Project Development',"data": [null, null, 7988, 12169, 15112, 22452, 34400, 34227]},{"name": 'Other',"data": [12908, 5948, 8105, 11248, 8989, 11816, 18274, 18111]}],"responsive": {"rules": [{"condition": {"maxWidth": 500},"chartOptions": {"legend": {"layout": 'horizontal',"align": 'center',"verticalAlign": 'bottom'}}}]}}

Pie Charts

This code sample shows how to create an interactive pie chart with Highcharts, displaying browser market shares with options for selecting and slicing portions of the pie.

{"chart": {"plotBackgroundColor": null,"plotBorderWidth": null,"plotShadow": false,"type": 'pie'},"title": {"text": 'Browser market shares in January, 2018'},"tooltip": {"pointFormat": '{series.name}: <b>{point.percentage:.1f}%</b>'},"accessibility": {"point": {"valueSuffix": '%'}},"plotOptions": {"pie": {"allowPointSelect": true,"cursor": 'pointer',"dataLabels": {"enabled": true,"format": '<b>{point.name}</b>: {point.percentage:.1f} %'}}},"series": [{"name": 'Brands',"colorByPoint": true,"data": [{"name": 'Chrome',"y": 61.41,"sliced": true,"selected": true},{"name": 'Internet Explorer',"y": 11.84},{"name": 'Firefox',"y": 10.85},{"name": 'Edge',"y": 4.67},{"name": 'Safari',"y": 4.18},{"name": 'Other',"y": 7.05}]}]}

3D Charts

This code sample illustrates how to create a 3D column chart using Highcharts, which adds a new dimension to the data visualization for better analysis and presentation.

{"chart": {"type": 'column',"options3d": {"enabled": true,"alpha": 15,"beta": 15,"viewDistance": 25,"depth": 40}},"title": {"text": 'Total fruit consumption, grouped by gender'},"plotOptions": {"column": {"depth": 25}},"series": [{"name": 'John',"data": [2, 3, 0, 4, 5]},{"name": 'Joe',"data": [1, 1, 4, 7, 2]}]}

Other packages similar to highcharts

chart.js

Chart.js is a popular open-source charting library that is lightweight and offers a simple API. It supports eight chart types, including line, bar, radar, doughnut, pie, polar area, bubble, and scatter. Compared to Highcharts, Chart.js is more focused on simplicity and ease of use, but it may not offer as many features or as much flexibility for complex visualizations.

d3

D3.js is a powerful and flexible library for creating custom data visualizations using web standards. It provides a low-level approach, giving developers more control over the final visualization. While Highcharts offers a high-level API for creating standard chart types easily, D3.js requires more coding but allows for more unique and intricate visualizations.

echarts

ECharts is an open-source charting library that offers a rich set of chart types and options. It is capable of producing interactive and complex charts and maps. ECharts is similar to Highcharts in terms of functionality but is known for its strong support for mobile devices and ease of integration with the Baidu Map service.

amcharts

amCharts is a comprehensive charting library that provides a wide array of chart types and features, including 3D charts, gauge charts, and timelines. It is comparable to Highcharts in terms of its feature set and is known for its user-friendly interface and extensive documentation. However, amCharts uses a different licensing model, which may be a consideration for some projects.

README

Highcharts is a JavaScript charting library based on SVG, with fallbacks to VML and canvas for old browsers. This package also contains Highstock, the financial charting package, and Highmaps for geo maps.

For NPM users, please note that this module replaces the previous Highcharts Server module.

• Official website: www.highcharts.com
• Download page: www.highcharts.com/download
• Licensing: www.highcharts.com/license
• Support: www.highcharts.com/support
• Issues: Working repo

Download and install Highcharts

Please note that there are several ways to use Highcharts. For general installation instructions, see the docs.

Use our CDN

Instead of downloading, you can use our CDN to access files directly. See code.highcharts.com for details.

<script src="https://code.highcharts.com/highcharts.src.js"></script>

Install from npm

See npm documentation on how to get started with npm.

npm install --save highcharts

Install from Bower

See Bower documentation on how to get started with Bower.

bower install highcharts

Load Highcharts as a CommonJS module

Highcharts is using an UMD module pattern, as a result it has support for CommonJS. The following examples presumes you are using npm to install Highcharts, see Download and install Highcharts for more details.

// Load Highcharts
var Highcharts = require('highcharts');
// Alternatively, this is how to load Highstock. Highmaps is similar.
// var Highcharts = require('highcharts/highstock');

// Load the exporting module, and initialize it.
require('highcharts/modules/exporting')(Highcharts);

// Generate the chart
Highcharts.chart('container', {
  // options - see https://api.highcharts.com/highcharts
});

Load Highcharts as an ES6 module

Since Highcharts supports CommonJS, it can be loaded as an ES6 module with the use of transpilers. Two common transpilers are Babel and TypeScript. These have different interpretations of a CommonJS module, which affects your syntax. The following examples presumes you are using npm to install Highcharts, see Download and install Highcharts for more details.

Babel

import Highcharts from 'highcharts';
// Alternatively, this is how to load Highstock. Highmaps is similar.
// import Highcharts from 'highcharts/highstock';

// Load the exporting module.
import Exporting from 'highcharts/modules/exporting';
// Initialize exporting module.
Exporting(Highcharts);

// Generate the chart
Highcharts.chart('container', {
  // options - see https://api.highcharts.com/highcharts
});

TypeScript

import * as Highcharts from 'highcharts';
// Alternatively, this is how to load Highstock. Highmaps is similar.
// import Highcharts from 'highcharts/highstock';

// Load the exporting module.
import * as Exporting from 'highcharts/modules/exporting';
// Initialize exporting module.
Exporting(Highcharts);

// Generate the chart
Highcharts.chart('container', {
  // options - see https://api.highcharts.com/highcharts
});

Styled mode vs classic

• The files for classic mode are available on root. This is the regular mode where presentational attributes and styling is set in the options structure.
• The JavaScript files for styled mode are available under the /js/ folder. In these files, most presentational code including options are removed, so without styling it will draw an ugly black-and-white chart if anything.
• The default CSS file for styled mode is available as /css/highcharts.css. This CSS is in turn based on a SCSS file, /css/highcharts.scss.