XChart

XChart is a light weight Java library for plotting data.

Description

XChart is a light-weight and convenient library for plotting data designed to go from data to chart in the least amount of time possible and to take the guess-work out of customizing the chart style.

Simplest Example

Create a XYChart instance via QuickChart, add a series of data to it, and either display it or save it as a bitmap.

    double[] xData = new double[] { 0.0, 1.0, 2.0 };
    double[] yData = new double[] { 2.0, 1.0, 0.0 };

    // Create Chart
    XYChart chart = QuickChart.getChart("Sample Chart", "X", "Y", "y(x)", xData, yData);

    // Show it
    new SwingWrapper(chart).displayChart();

    // Save it
    BitmapEncoder.saveBitmap(chart, "./Sample_Chart", BitmapFormat.PNG);

    // or save it in high-res
    BitmapEncoder.saveBitmapWithDPI(chart, "./Sample_Chart_300_DPI", BitmapFormat.PNG, 300);

Intermediate Example

Create a XYChart via a XYChartBuilder, style chart, add a series to it, style series, and display chart.

    // Create Chart
    XYChart chart = new XYChartBuilder().width(600).height(500).title("Gaussian Blobs").xAxisTitle("X").yAxisTitle("Y").build();

    // Customize Chart
    chart.getStyler().setDefaultSeriesRenderStyle(ChartXYSeriesRenderStyle.Scatter);
    chart.getStyler().setChartTitleVisible(false);
    chart.getStyler().setLegendPosition(LegendPosition.InsideSW);
    chart.getStyler().setMarkerSize(16);

    // Series
    chart.addSeries("Gaussian Blob 1", getGaussian(1000, 1, 10), getGaussian(1000, 1, 10));
    XYSeries series = chart.addSeries("Gaussian Blob 2", getGaussian(1000, 1, 10), getGaussian(1000, 0, 5));
    series.setMarker(SeriesMarkers.DIAMOND);

    new SwingWrapper(chart).displayChart();

Advanced Example

Create a XYChart via a XYChartBuilder, style chart, add a series to it, add chart to XChartPanel, embed in Java Swing App, and display GUI.

    // Create Chart
    final XYChart chart = new XYChartBuilder().width(600).height(400).title("Area Chart").xAxisTitle("X").yAxisTitle("Y").build();

    // Customize Chart
    chart.getStyler().setLegendPosition(LegendPosition.InsideNE);
    chart.getStyler().setDefaultSeriesRenderStyle(XYSeriesRenderStyle.Area);

    // Series
    chart.addSeries("a", new double[] { 0, 3, 5, 7, 9 }, new double[] { -3, 5, 9, 6, 5 });
    chart.addSeries("b", new double[] { 0, 2, 4, 6, 9 }, new double[] { -1, 6, 4, 0, 4 });
    chart.addSeries("c", new double[] { 0, 1, 3, 8, 9 }, new double[] { -2, -1, 1, 0, 1 });

    // Schedule a job for the event-dispatching thread:
    // creating and showing this application's GUI.
    javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

      @Override
      public void run() {

        // Create and set up the window.
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("Advanced Example");
        frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

        // chart
        JPanel chartPanel = new XChartPanel<XYChart>(chart);
        frame.add(chartPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);

        // label
        JLabel label = new JLabel("Blah blah blah.", SwingConstants.CENTER);
        frame.add(label, BorderLayout.SOUTH);

        // Display the window.
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
      }
    });

To make it real-time, simply call updateXYSeries on the XYChart instance to update the series data, followed by revalidate() and repaint() on the XChartPanel instance to repaint.

Features

• No required additional dependencies
• ~182KB Jar
• Line charts
• Scatter charts
• Area charts
• Bar charts
• Histogram charts
• Pie charts
• Donut charts
• Bubble charts
• Stick charts
• Error bars
• Logarithmic axes
• Number, Date, Bubble and Category X-Axis
• Multiple series
• Extensive customization
• Themes - XChart, GGPlot2, Matlab
• Right-click, Save-As...
• User-defined axes range
• Custom legend placement
• CSV import and export
• High resolution chart export
• Export as PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF with custom DPI setting
• Export SVG, EPS and PDF using optional de.erichseifert.vectorgraphics2d library
• Real-time charts
• Java 6 and up

Chart Types

Currently, there are three major chart types: XYChart, CategoryChart and PieChart. Each type has its corresponding ChartBuilder, Styler and Series.

Chart Type	Builder	Styler	Series	Allowed X-Axis Data Types	Default Series Render Style
XYChart	XYChartBuilder	XYStyler	XYSeries	Number, Date	Line
CategoryChart	CategoryChartBuilder	CategoryStyler	CategorySeries	Number, Date, String	Bar
PieChart	PieChartBuilder	PieStyler	PieSeries	String	Pie
BubbleChart	BubbleChartBuilder	BubbleStyler	BubbleSeries	Number, Date	Round

The different Stylers contain chart styling methods specific to the corresponding chart type as well as common styling methods common across all chart types.

XYChart

XYChart charts take Date or Number data types for the X-Axis and Number data types for the Y-Axis. For both axes, the tick marks are auto generated to span the range and domain of the data in evenly-spaced intervals.

Series render styles include: Line, Scatter and Area.

CategoryChart

CategoryChart charts take Date, Number or String data types for the X-Axis and Number data types for the Y-Axis. For the X-Axis, each category is given its own tick mark.

Series render styles include: Bar, Line, Scatter, Area and Stick.

PieChart

PieChart charts take String data types for the pie slice name and Number data types for the pie slice value.

Series render styles include: Pie and Donut.

BubbleChart

BubbleChart charts take Date or Number data types for the X-Axis and Number data types for the Y-Axis and bubble sizes.

Series render styles include: Round and in the near future Square.

Real-time Java Charts using XChart

Creating real-time charts is as simple as calling updateXYSeries for one or more series objects through the XYChart instance and triggering a redraw of the JPanel containing the chart. This works for all chart types including XYChart, CategoryChart, BubbleChart and PieChart, for which example source code can be found here. Examples demonstrate using the SwingWrapper with repaintChart() method as well as XChartPanel with revalidate() and repaint().

The following sample code used to generate the above real-time chart can be found here.

    public class SimpleRealTime {
    
      public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    
        double phase = 0;
        double[][] initdata = getSineData(phase);
    
        // Create Chart
        final XYChart chart = QuickChart.getChart("Simple XChart Real-time Demo", "Radians", "Sine", "sine", initdata[0], initdata[1]);
    
        // Show it
        final SwingWrapper<XYChart> sw = new SwingWrapper<XYChart>(chart);
        sw.displayChart();
    
        while (true) {
    
          phase += 2 * Math.PI * 2 / 20.0;
    
          Thread.sleep(100);
    
          final double[][] data = getSineData(phase);
    
          javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
    
            @Override
            public void run() {
    
              chart.updateXYSeries("sine", data[0], data[1], null);
              sw.repaintChart();
            }
          });
        }
    
      }
    
      private static double[][] getSineData(double phase) {
    
        double[] xData = new double[100];
        double[] yData = new double[100];
        for (int i = 0; i < xData.length; i++) {
          double radians = phase + (2 * Math.PI / xData.length * i);
          xData[i] = radians;
          yData[i] = Math.sin(radians);
        }
        return new double[][] { xData, yData };
      }
    }

Chart Customization

All the styling options can be found in one of two possible places: 1) the Chart's Styler or 2) the series' set methods. With this chart customization design, all customization options can be quickly "discovered" using an IDE's built in "Content Assist". With centralized styling like this, there is no need to hunt around the entire charting API to find that one customization you're looking for - it's all right in one spot!

Chart Themes

XChart ships with three different themes: Default XChart, GGPlot2 and Matlab. Using a different theme is as simple as setting the Chart's theme with the theme method of the ChartBuilder.

XYChart chart = new XYChartBuilder().width(800).height(600).theme(ChartTheme.Matlab).build();

What's Next?

Now go ahead and study some more examples, download the thing and provide feedback.

Getting Started

Non-Maven

Download Jar: http://knowm.org/open-source/xchart/xchart-change-log

Maven

The XChart release artifacts are hosted on Maven Central.

Add the XChart library as a dependency to your pom.xml file:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.knowm.xchart</groupId>
        <artifactId>xchart</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.2</version>
    </dependency>

For snapshots, add the following to your pom.xml file:

    <repository>
      <id>sonatype-oss-snapshot</id>
      <snapshots/>
      <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
    </repository>

    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.knowm.xchart</groupId>
      <artifactId>xchart</artifactId>
      <version>3.2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </dependency>

Snapshots can be manually downloaded from Sonatype: https://oss.sonatype.org/content/groups/public/org/knowm/xchart/xchart/

SBT

To use XChart with the Scala Build Tool (SBT) add the following to your build.sbt

libraryDependencies += "org.knowm.xchart" % "xchart" % "3.2.2" exclude("de.erichseifert.vectorgraphics2d", "VectorGraphics2D") withSources()

Building

general

mvn clean package  
mvn javadoc:aggregate  

maven-license-plugin

mvn license:check
mvn license:format
mvn license:remove

Running Demo

cd /path/to/xchart-demo/jar/
java -cp xchart-demo-3.2.2.jar:xchart-3.2.2.jar org.knowm.xchart.demo.XChartDemo

Bugs

Please report any bugs or submit feature requests to XChart's Github issue tracker.

Continuous Integration

Build History

Donations

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All donations will be used to pay bounties for new features, refactoring, etc. Please consider donating or even posting your own bounties on our Issues Page. Open bounties and bounties paid thus far can be found on Knowm's bounties page.

Release Information

We will announce new releases on our Twitter page.