Angular 6 Tag

How to create impressive looking Gauge Charts using Angular 6

When necessary, a Gauge Chart or Speedometer Chart can be great in visualizing data. But how do we implement it in Angular 6?

Recently we have done a little research to find suitable Gauge chart components in Angular 6. We tried out 3 free chart component libraries, they are:

ngx-gauge@1.0.0-beta.4
angular-google-charts@0.1.2
angular-highcharts

Although all three can produce nice looking Gauge charts, the features provided are quite different, and of course, they all have their strengths and limitations.

ngx-gauge

This is the first component that I tested as it appeared on very top of the google search results.

pics courtesy: medium.com

It is a simple and good looking component with basic features. It is easy to install and use, simply follow the instructions at github. One feature to highlight is the “Threshold color Range”, it can define a “thresholdConfig” property as below, thus the color will change depending on the data value.

We created sample in stackblitz to demo this feature.

thresholdConfig = {
    '0': {color: 'green'},
    '40': {color: 'orange'},
    '75.5': {color: 'red'}
};

The shortcoming of this component is that it does not support some of the common features like plotting color bands or dial arrows. Unfortunately, the color bands are a must have for my project, so different components must be used.

angular-google-charts

Angular Google charts is wrapper of the Google Charts library for Angular 6+. Google Charts is a powerful data tool which includes a rich gallery of interactive charts.

pics courtesy: medium.com

To setup the Gauge chart in angular, first install the package

npm install angular-google-charts

Then import it into app.module.ts

imports: [
    ...
    GoogleChartsModule.forRoot(),
    ...
  ],

In the component that consume the chart

<google-chart #googlechart [title]="chart.title" [type]="chart.type" [data]="chart.data" [options]="chart.options">
</google-chart>
 
 @ViewChild('googlechart')
  googlechart: GoogleChartComponent;
  chart = {
    type: 'Gauge',
    data: [
      ['Memory', 50],
      ['CPU', 99]
    ],
    options: {
      width: 400,
      height: 120,
      greenFrom: 0,
      greenTo: 75,
      redFrom: 90,
      redTo: 100,
      yellowFrom: 75,
      yellowTo: 90,
      minorTicks: 5
    }
  };

We wrap up the above code into a stackblitz project for your reference.

While the gauge is very configurable and supports three color sections (green, yellow and red), the colors can not be customized and it does not support additional colors. It may not be a issue for a typical use case, but our project requires specific colors and more than just three colors. So the search continues.

angular-highcharts

It is a wrapper for very popular high charts js charting library based on SVG. While highcharts is extremely feature rich, the large number of properties also makes the component a bit confusing for a developer new to this library.

pics courtesy: medium.com

The installation and setup for Gauge chart using the angular-highcharts is not very straightforward, but once it is setup, it works like a charm.

First, install with npm.

npm install angular-google-charts@6.2.6
npm install highcharts@4.2.5

Please note that the version 6.2.6 works with Angular 6.

Then in app.module.ts, import the following.

import { ChartModule, HIGHCHARTS_MODULES } from 'angular-highcharts';
import * as more from 'highcharts/highcharts-more.src';
import * as solidGauge from 'highcharts/modules/solid-gauge.src';
...
  providers: [{ provide: HIGHCHARTS_MODULES, useFactory: () => [more, solidGauge] }],
...

In the component class

<div #chartTarget></div>

  //component class
  import {
  Component,
  ViewChild,
  ElementRef,
  AfterViewInit,
  OnInit
} from '@angular/core';
import { chart, SolidGaugeChart } from 'highcharts';
import * as Highcharts from 'highcharts';
import * as solidGauge from 'highcharts/modules/solid-gauge.src';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: './app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent implements OnInit, AfterViewInit {
  title = 'app';

  @ViewChild('chartTarget')
  chartTarget: ElementRef;
  options: any;
  chart: Highcharts.ChartObject;

  ngOnInit() {}

  ngAfterViewInit() {
    this.initOptions();
    this.chart = chart(this.chartTarget.nativeElement, this.options as any);
  }

  initOptions() {
    this.options = {
      chart: {
        type: 'solidgauge'
      },
      title: {
        text: 'Solid Gauge Demo'
      },
      pane: {
        startAngle: -90,
        endAngle: 90,
        background: {
          backgroundColor: 'white',
          innerRadius: '60%',
          outerRadius: '90%',
          shape: 'arc'
        }
      },
      tooltip: {
        enabled: false
      },
      // the value axis
      yAxis: {
        stops: [
          [0.5, 'green'], // green
          [0.6, 'yellow'], // yellow
          [0.9, '#DF5353'] // red
        ],
        length: 5,
        lineWidth: 0,
        minorTickInterval: null,
        tickAmount: 2,
        title: {
          y: -70
        },
        labels: {
          y: 16
        },
        min: 0,
        max: 200,
        plotBands: [
          { from: 0, to: 100, color: 'green' },
          { from: 100, to: 120, color: 'yellow' },
          { from: 120, to: 200, color: 'red' }
        ]
      },
      plotOptions: {
        solidgauge: {
          dataLabels: {
            y: 5,
            borderWidth: 0,
            useHTML: true
          }
        }
      },
      series: [
        {
          data: [80]
        }
      ]
    };
  }
}

The result of above is as below

pics courtesy: medium.com

As you can see, there are more configurable properties in the above sample code than the other two components. And this is just a simple version, for more available API, go to highcharts API reference site.

For more Information and to build website using Angular, Hire Angular Developer from us as we give you high quality product by utilizing all the latest tools and advanced technology. E-mail us any clock at – hello@hkinfosoft.com or Skype us: “hkinfosoft“.

To develop custom web app using Angular, please visit our technology page.

Angular 6 is just released!

The 6.0.0 release of Angular was published before the last week. This is a major release focused less on the underlying framework, and more on the toolchain and on making it easier to move quickly with Angular in the future.

As a part of this release, we are synchronizing the major versions going forward for the framework packages (@angular/core, @angular/common, @angular/compiler, etc), the Angular CLI, and Angular Material + CDK. All are releasing as 6.0.0 today. We made this change to clarify cross compatibility. The minor and patch releases for these projects will be issued based on the project’s needs.

See the full list of changes in our changelogs: framework, material+cdk, cli.

ng update

ng update <package> is a new CLI command that analyzes your package.json and uses its knowledge of Angular to recommend updates to your application.

Not only will ng update help you adopt the right version of dependencies, and keep your dependencies in sync, but 3rd parties can provide update scripts using schematics. If one of your dependencies provides an ng update schematic, they can automatically update your code when they need to make breaking changes!

ng update will not replace your package manager, but uses npm or yarn under the hood to manage dependencies. In addition to updating dependencies and peer dependencies, ng update will apply needed transforms to your project.

Angular Material + CDK Components

The biggest addition is the new tree component for displaying hierarchical data. Following patterns from the data-table component, the CDK houses the core tree directives, with Angular Material offering the same experience with Material Design styles on top. We recently gave a talk about the component, so check that out for more information (video, slides). These new tree components come in both styled (Material’s mat-tree) and unstyled versions (CDK’s cdk-tree).

Alongside the tree, we also have new badge and bottom-sheet components. Badges help display small bits of helpful information, such as unread item counts. Bottom-sheets are a special type of mobile-centric dialogs that come up from the bottom of the viewport, commonly used to present a list of options following an action.

The @angular/cdk/overlay package is one of the most powerful pieces of infrastructure in the CDK today. With the release of v6, this package now includes new positioning logic that helps make pop-ups that intelligently remain on-screen in all situations.

Angular Material Starter Components

Once you have run ng add @angular/material to add material to an existing application, you will also be able to generate 3 new starter components.

Material Sidenav

You can now generate a starter component including a toolbar with the app name and the side navigation. This component is responsive based on breakpoints.

Run:

ng generate @angular/material:material-nav --name=my-nav

This will create this starter component:

Pic courtesy: blog.angular.io

Material Dashboard

You can now generate a starter dashboard component containing a dynamic grid list of cards.

Run:

ng generate @angular/material:material-dashboard --name=my-dashboard

This will create this starter component:

Pic courtesy: blog.angular.io

Material Data Table

You can generate a starter data table component that is pre-configured with a datasource for sorting and pagination.

Run:

ng generate @angular/material:material-table --name=my-table

This will create this starter component:

Pic courtesy: blog.angular.io

Tree Shakable Providers

To make your applications smaller, we’ve moved from modules referencing services to services referencing modules. This allows us to only bundle services into your code base in modules where they are injected.

Before

@NgModule({
...
providers: [MyService]
})
export class AppModule {}

File: app.module.ts

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';

@Injectable()
export class MyService {
constructor() { }
}

File: my-service.ts

After

No references are needed in our NgModule.

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';

@Injectable({
providedIn: 'root',
})
export class MyService {
constructor() { }
}

For more Information and to build website using Angular, Hire Angular Developer from us as we give you high quality product by utilizing all the latest tools and advanced technology. E-mail us any clock at – hello@hkinfosoft.com or Skype us: “hkinfosoft“.

To develop custom web app using Angular, please visit our technology page.