This Project is no longer being developed.

After building this, I found that Google Charts began accepting a much simpler JSON format. I'll keep this up on github, though, because it doesn't hurt to leave it up, and there is some neat code in here.

pyjsongooglechart

pyjsongooglechart is a simple wrapper around the Google api for Javascript charts. It is a slightly thicker wrapper than the Python wrapper that Google provides. It enables the user to easily compile JSON data in the appropriate format for the charts, without having to worry too much about the structure of the JSON.

The Basics

This library will provide a wrapper for each of the major Google Javascript charts.

Basic Chart

Pie charts are probably the most basic charts; therefore, a good place to start.

from pyjsongooglechart import PieChart

chart = PieChart("Electoral College Votes") # Initialized with the chart title

# Each argument represents a column. Pie charts have two columns; the first for
# the slice label, and the second contains the numeric value.
chart.insert_row("California", 55)
chart.insert_row("Nevada", 5)
chart.insert_row("Texas", 34)

# Renders the above data into a JSON string
json = chart.render_json()

Depending on the framework you're using, you'll also need to create an HTTP response. The following is how you could do it in Django:

from django.http import HttpResponse

return HttpResponse(json, mimetype="application/json")

Customizations

The PieChart produced by the above code is rather simple. However, we can spruce it up. Google Charts allows you to change the display text for each row. This library supports that:

chart.insert_row("Washington", (12, "Twelve"))
chart.insert_row("Maine", (4, "Four"))

We can also modify the options of the chart. The following options are all defined within the Google Charts docs (there are many more):

chart.options.is3D = True
chart.options.legend.position = "left"
chart.options.height = 500
chart.options.width = 600