Interactive Charts for Web Applications

Question

We are working on a web application (implemented in JAVA) at commodity prices, and one part of it is an interactive chart. I have provided a simplified example here. We have a table in the Mysql database where we have commodity price information in the states and counties of the USA. One aspect of the application is the creation of interactive graphs based on user choice. For example, if the user needs to see the price density in Oregon and Lynn County, then she selects it from the menu on the web page, and it is displayed on the fly with the accompanying quantile information in the table. As the user changes the state and rounding of these graphs and the table changes on the fly. For our computing needs, we use R (and use rjava to integrate it with our web application), and I knowthat if interactivity is not a problem, this is part of the cake in ggplot2, but I don’t know any interactive version of the graphical environment R (for example, grids, ggplot2). We are studying the google visualization API, but I'm not sure that we can have the statistical power we need in some areas. Please, help.

Answer 1

You can absolutely do what you described by calling R after every change to your web application. What the Jeroen Ooms app does . Or check out the Jaime Love R-Node app for an example of the R webapp that uses RServe.

R does not have a complete package of interactive web graphics at this stage. You can see the webvis package for R / Protovis integration, but so far this does not include any interactivity.

Answer 2

, Javascript, protovis humblefinance, , brew, ?

Answer 3

I don’t know if this is enough to meet your needs, but the gWidgetsWWW package can be used to make interactive graphics pretty easy. Some examples and links to their source can be found here:

http://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/gWidgetsWWW/run/ex-index

- John