Building a JavaScript Chart from Scratch

Nowadays, there is so much data, and organizations want to leverage the data in the best way possible for their stakeholders, decision makers and end users to get the actionable insights they need to make more informed and proactive decisions. It’s not uncommon for some sectors to process terabytes of data every day—and businesses want to acquire profit-driven insights from the data. The trick is to find a charting library with the performance and customization capabilities you require, while offering a user-friendly interface for your developers to reduce the dashboard development time. 

Data visualization is a good approach, especially if you want to make more money, need to know your clients better, and explore the right data. Find out how a JavaScript chart library, such as SciChart.js, can support your developers when building a high-performance JavaScript chart from scratch. 

How to Display Data Using JavaScript?

Most developers don’t start completely from scratch. They already have a project in motion and use the library API to create the chart visualization they need to complete the deliverables from the brief. However, if you are new to using SciChart, we’ve listed our advice on how to start building everything from ambitious one million data point charts to more basic line, bar, candlestick, or pie charts. 

Support that SciChart Offers (that Other Libraries Don’t Offer to the Same Extent)

SciChart has a wealth of resources to support developers, including hundreds of documentation, examples, tutorials and forums. Built by developers for developers, every facet of our library is designed to offer an intuitive, user-friendly interface that even junior developers can leverage to power exceptional big data projects. 

• Getting Started with SciChart Tutorials:
  Who doesn’t love a video showing you how to get started with a new project? SciChart’s tutorials offer a lifeline for developers getting stuck in on a new data visualization project with SciChart.js. Founder Andrew Burnett-Thompson shows you how to create your first chart with SciChart.js. There are also step-by-step written processes to follow to make sure you have all the resources you need installed, so you’re ready to go! Essentially, you won’t need to spend time getting other developers on the team up to speed—you can just send them the getting started links, and they’ll have everything needed to build the best JavaScript charts from scratch! Oh—and make sure you install npm.

Watch this video tutorial on Youtube on creating your first chart with SciChart.js.

• Documentation & Examples:
  If you don’t need the beginner tutorial, you can go straight to the documentation and examples. New to SciChart? Our documentation is your guiding light. Browse the SciChart.js JavaScript Charts User Manual to get up to speed on using SciChartSurface (the root 2D chart control), adding axis, and creating highly customizable annotations or interactions, such as zooming and panning.

• Demos: 

If you’re more familiar with using JavaScript to build charts, head straight for the JavaScript demos. This links to the source code on GitHub. You can then clone and run the code locally and modify it to tweak the data and how it looks in the visualization. Can’t find what you’re looking for? The demo site has a limited number of examples, but SciChart has a repository of examples that should contain all the code you need. 

• View the Properties:

The code contained within the properties within the API documentation lets you change every element of the chart. For example, if you wanted to insert an X and Y axis and want to change the visible range, the properties let you check the properties to find what’s responsible for this visible range. If you want to change the data on a line chart, for example, or want to change how the axis looks, the ‘properties’ make that easy.

• Typescript Support:

It’s beneficial that SciChart offers Typescript support, as not all libraries provide this. This gives you IntelliSense support and lets you see the list of properties, including all the elements you can tweak and change.

• Developer Support:

If you get stuck, you can get in touch, and the team can support your technical requirements, from providing examples from our repository to fixing a bug. 

• Forum:

We’ve built quite the community of developers online that share their common challenges when building charts with JavaScript. Often, if you Google your technical problem, you’ll be led straight to our forum. Our team and community are responsive, and you have access to a multitude of questions and answers that are easy to search. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Don’t be shy! We are asked hundreds of questions every week and welcome developers to post on our forum, as this helps us improve.  

How to Create Custom Charts in JavaScript?

Want to do more than what out-of-the-box charting solutions provide? No problem. Chart libraries like SciChart offer more customizations and flexibility, giving more control to developers over their data visualizations. Being hardware-accelerated sets a library apart from others, as this allows you to render millions of data points really fast. Looking to create a simple chart? Our strength lies in our broad API that helps developers save time and create the chart faster.

There’s also 3D support to consider. Sometimes a 2D chart just doesn’t provide the angle you’re looking for. Only a few libraries offer this, so if you have a lot of data and want to visualize it from a different angle, it could be useful to use a 3D JavaScript chart library. 

What is the Simplest JavaScript Chart Library?

Often, it’s not about working with the simplest library, but the one that offers the most support and features to enable you to achieve your data visualizations on brief, but also to help unlock the data insights you or your organization really needs. 

Developers find the most challenging aspect of creating JavaScript charts is using a new library. That’s because every library has its own API and time is required to figure out how everything works. This is especially if you need to create something more sophisticated or ambitious.

That’s where this guide comes in. We’ll point you in the direction of the best place to start, so you can laser focus your time and attention on building the best JavaScript chart dashboards and visualizations. 

Customers benefit from an easy-to-navigate library while also having the technology and functionality to build better charts. 

How to Create a Dynamic Chart in JavaScript?

Dynamic charts show data ranges that update automatically when you change the data source. Show the basics of how to create a dynamic chart, such as a bar chart. SciChart has specific documentation to support the creation of dynamic charts, known as our Chart Synchronization APIs. This lets you synchronize multiple charts with real-time data rendering, so you can build dynamic dashboards with ease. 

Charting is not the difficult part. The difficult part is how you manage the data. Time and again, developers tell us that the biggest challenge is not actually the JavaScript charting but working with the data. It’s imperative that the data is sourced, transformed and integrated in the right way and that genuine real-time updates (without lag) are supported.

Page elements need to be synchronized, with all data updating at the same time across platforms, devices and dashboards. This is quite difficult for someone that doesn’t have experience. Single source of truth to make all elements display the same thing. Charting developers can also work with their web development team to help solve data challenges, especially for a JavaScript chart builder with less experience in the field. 

Let’s say your end users are accessing your JavaScript charts on a remote device, and perhaps not the best up-to-date hardware. You want to ensure the data isn’t compromised. That’s where SciChart offers unparalleled performance. 

With our high-performance JavaScript chart library, which works even on lower-grade hardware devices, charts reliably and consistently update at the superfast frames per second that we’re known for. In fact, millions of data points can be rendered with our hardware-accelerated graphics engine. 

What’s powering your charts and data matters. Sure, you need to make sure the right data is inputted from your side, but SciChart works its magic with the rendering. 

Find out more about how we could help you and your development team build exceptional, high-performance JavaScript data applications from scratch. Our hardware-accelerated graphics engine renders tens of millions of data points with real-time updates. You’ll also benefit from our customization possibilities, helping you create the exact data visualizations required for your JavaScript charting project.