If you want to draw a diagram or chart on your web page, using data held on your server, chances are that the co-ordinates of the data won't match the pixel numbers that you're using on the screen. A case in point - on this week's PHP Techniques Workshop was a file of data for the years 2005 to 2010 (to be plotted along the X axis of a 750 pixel wide window ... allowing 100 pixels on the left for border and labels, and 50 pixels on the right for border. Then on the Y axis, 400 pixels long from pixel 0 at the top to pixel 399 at the base, we wanted to plot a number in the range 1.0. to 3.0.

In computer graphics for diagrams such as this, you can convert a world co-ordinate to a screen co-ordiante using a multiplication and an addition; the clever bit is working out what the factors are for the multiplication and addition. During the course, I wrote a "Bull at a gate" piece of code and then, as I wrote it, moved constants out to single assignments, and created a "pixelator" class to performa axis transforms. The contsructor is called with two mappings alon an axis - for example
  $xaxis = new pixelator(2005,100,2010,$wid-50);
2005 (world) converts to 100 (pixel) and 2010 (world) converts to 50 less that the graphic width (pixel). I can then call a method to convert world to pixel co-ordinates as I draw my diagaram:
  $xp = $xaxis->w2p($year);
and leave the messier geekier calculation safely encapsulated within the class. The full graphic script is [here].

One of the other issues was how to display numbers in very different y ranges on the same set of axes, and as we were particularly interested in changes from 2005 to 2010, we normalised the data so that it always started at 100% and then went up or down. The graph shows the strong growth, at almost every station in the Bristol area, of train use over the six years, with some stations shooting way off the top of the graph. Actually it's not a huge surprise that the biggest proportional growth was at Severn Beach, where the service is now much better than it was in 2005.

But although a picture paints a lot of words very quickly, it's useful to have access to the real data. Rather than include that within the image, we elected to include it in a table in a web page that enclosed the table, and then call up the image script from within the HTML generating script. That web page script is [here] (and to complete the picture, the data file is [here].

The comments I have made above are about Bristol. Would you like to see what the diagram and figures are for your part of the country? Easy ... I've included a form at the end of the page into which you can type the letter or letter(s) that start your postcode, and you'll get a diagram for your own postcode area. You can do that from the running program which is [here] in our demo directory. It starts with "SN" for Swindon ...

(written 2011-03-24)

 Q913 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Computer Graphics Principles
  [2245] Client side (Applet) and Server side (Servlet) Graphics in Java - (2009-06-17)
  [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13)
  [2758] But what will you DO with all those pictures? - (2010-05-09)
  [2992] Matplotlib - graphing in Python - teaching examples - (2010-10-10)
  [3049] Computer Graphics is fun - even if Java Applets are Old Hat - (2010-11-13)
  [3148] OpenGL / C / C++ - an example to get you started - (2011-01-26)
  [3261] Scalable Vector Graphics - easy, low bandwidth, high resolution, dynamic. - (2011-04-23)
  [3262] Some SVG Elements, pixel and percent positioning - (2011-04-24)

H309 - PHP - Maps, Graphics and Geographics
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)
  [665] PHP Image viewing application - (2006-04-01)
  [937] Display an image from a MySQL database in a web page via PHP - (2006-11-22)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [1389] Controlling and labelling Google maps via PHP - (2007-10-13)
  [1390] Converting from postal address to latitude / longitude - (2007-10-13)
  [1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
  [1628] Gant charts - drawing them with a PHP script - (2008-05-03)
  [1724] addslashes v mysql_real_escape_string in PHP - (2008-07-27)
  [1734] All around the world? - (2008-08-03)
  [1752] Dynamic maps / geographics in PHP - (2008-08-13)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
  [1956] Images for Christmas - (2008-12-21)
  [2343] World Flags in your PHP pages - (2009-08-10)
  [2361] Geocoding - converting address to latitude / Longitude with PHP via Google - (2009-08-14)
  [2390] Dynamic / changing images on your web page - (2009-09-01)
  [2583] Reducing image size on digital photos - PHP - (2010-01-17)
  [2675] Redirecting to your main domain for correct security keys - (2010-03-13)
  [2729] Uploading a document or image to its own URL via a browser - (2010-04-18)
  [2939] Protecting your images from use out of context - (2010-08-29)
  [3027] Server logs - drawing a graph of gathered data - (2010-11-03)
  [3133] An image from a website that occasionally comes out as hyroglyphics - (2011-01-14)
  [3197] Finding and diverting image requests from rogue domains - (2011-03-08)
  [3447] Needle in a haystack - finding the web server overload - (2011-09-18)
  [3536] UK Mapping Data - and more to come - under government Open Data measures - (2011-12-03)
  [3584] QR codes - graphics images that provide quick phone links - (2012-01-18)
  [3734] QR codes with marketing logos embedded - (2012-05-16)
  [3817] Fpdf - generating .pdf documents easily from your PHP program - (2012-07-24)
  [4178] Where are you? How to write a geosensitive application - (2013-09-18)
  [4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
  [4437] Adding a PHP build option, rotating an image based on camera data, and a new look at thumbnails in PHP - (2015-02-22)
  [4655] Image indexer / thumbnail display scripts in PHP - (2016-02-25)

H108 - Objects in PHP
  [67] Object Oriented Programming in PHP - (2004-09-29)
  [124] PHP v Java - (2004-11-20)
  [205] PHP5 lets you say no - (2005-02-07)
  [343] Should I use structured or object oriented? - (2005-06-10)
  [421] Don't repeat code - use loops or functions - (2005-08-21)
  [485] North, Norther and Northest - PHP 5 Objects - (2005-11-04)
  [656] Think about your design even if you don't use full UML - (2006-03-24)
  [720] Planning a hotel refurb - an example of a Gant chart in PHP - (2006-05-14)
  [836] Build on what you already have with OO - (2006-08-17)
  [1027] Cue the music, I'm happy. - (2007-01-09)
  [1153] Object Oriented Model - a summary of changes from PHP4 to PHP5 - (2007-04-18)
  [1217] What are factory and singleton classes? - (2007-06-04)
  [1535] OO PHP demonstration - comparing objects and more - (2008-02-08)
  [1682] Accounts in PHP - an OO demo - (2008-06-19)
  [1819] Calling base class constructors - (2008-10-03)
  [1820] Sorting objects in PHP - (2008-10-04)
  [1925] Introduction to Object Oriented Programming - (2008-12-06)
  [2160] PHP - getclass v instanceof - (2009-05-07)
  [2169] When should I use OO techniques? - (2009-05-11)
  [2171] Cleaning up redundant objects - (2009-05-11)
  [2172] PHP4 v PHP5 - Object Model Difference - (2009-05-11)
  [2380] Object Oriented programming - a practical design example - (2009-08-27)
  [2434] Abstract classes, Interfaces, PHP and Java - (2009-10-03)
  [2435] Serialization - storing and reloading objects - (2009-10-04)
  [2632] Shipping a test harness with your class in PHP - (2010-02-12)
  [2641] Object Oriented Programming in PHP - (2010-02-19)
  [2680] Static class members in PHP - a documented example - (2010-03-16)
  [2717] The Multiple Inheritance Conundrum, interfaces and mixins - (2010-04-11)
  [2741] What is a factory? - (2010-04-26)
  [2774] PHP - Object Oriented Design in use - (2010-05-21)
  [2921] Does copying a variable duplicate the contents? - (2010-08-14)
  [2922] Getting the OO design write - with PHP a example - (2010-08-14)
  [3142] Private and Public - and things between - (2011-01-22)
  [3210] Catchable fatal error in PHP ... How to catch, and alternative solutions such as JSON - (2011-03-22)
  [3607] Designing your application - using UML techniques - (2012-02-11)
  [3608] Design Patterns - what are they? Why use them? - (2012-02-12)
  [3609] How do classes relate to each other? Associated Classes - (2012-02-12)
  [3840] Autoload in PHP - (2012-08-17)
  [3841] Copying, duplicating, cloning an object in PHP - (2012-08-18)
  [3843] Caching Design Patterns - (2012-08-20)
  [3953] Objects in PHP - Revision - (2012-12-16)
  [4057] stdClass in PHP - using an object rather than an associative array - (2013-04-02)
  [4073] Learning about Object Orientation in PHP - a new set of examples - (2013-04-28)
  [4356] Object factories in C++, Python, PHP and Perl - (2014-12-19)
  [4366] Changing what operators do on objects - a comparison across different programming languages - (2014-12-26)
  [4626] Singleton design pattern - examples and uses - (2016-01-20)
  [4627] Caching results in an object for efficiency - avoiding re-calculation - (2016-01-20)
  [4628] Associative objects - one object within another. - (2016-01-20)

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