Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition

Creating a Simple Graph

Regardless of the type of chart or graph you want to create, you need to start with the cfchart tag. cfchart acts as a container tag for setting up the chart’s basic characteristics, such as height, width, and background color. The cfchart tag is a paired tag and must have both an opening and closing tag.

The cfchartseries tag determines what type of chart or graph to create for a particular series of static or dynamic data and allows you to specify attributes for the series, such as labels, color, etc. ColdFusion MX 6.1 can graph multiple data series in a single chart. The number of data series is limited only by the size of the chart.^[1] The cfchartseries tag is also paired and requires an opening and closing tag. Additional static data points may be added to a chart series by nesting one or more cfchartdata tags inside a cfchartseries pair. Example 17-1 shows how to generate a bar chart from static data using all three tags just mentioned.

Example 17-1. Creating a simple graph from static data

<cfchart format="Flash" chartheight="400" chartwidth="400" foregroundcolor="##000000" backgroundcolor="##C0C0C0" databackgroundcolor="##0000FF" rotated="No" showborder="Yes" scalefrom="0" scaleto="100000" gridlines="11" showxgridlines="Yes" showygridlines="Yes" seriesplacement="Default" font="Arial" fontsize="12" fontbold="Yes" fontitalic="Yes" xaxistitle="Salary" yaxistitle="Employee" xaxistype="scale" yaxistype="scale" sortxaxis="No" labelformat="Currency" ...