Using Python or Java, what would be the best way to create charts?

Question

I've been searching and found jFreeChart, Python Google Chart and matplotlib. Searching here I also found CairoPlot. I've heard I might be able to use OpenOffice to do it too. Is the API easy to use? Or would it be simpler to stick to one of those libraries?

I have more experience with Java, but I've read most of Dive Into Python 3 and done some mockup programs in Python for simple things. I'm probably gonna have to spend more time doing it in Python, though I'm willing to do it as long as it isn't anything mindblowing. I want to automate some tests to put into a thesis, so I'm more worried about the end product.

So far I'm thinking of using matplotlib simply because it's the only one that's had any recent updates, which leads me to assume there might be more documentation due to continued support. I've used jFreeChart in the past too for some testing, and it was ok. But I was hoping to find something better, or to have more documentation/examples to use. Last time I didn't customize the graphics appearance as I wanted - say, change the background in a line plot - due to the lack of examples/documentation.

Answer 1

Google's Visualization API is fantastic - and much cleaner if you're working in a web environment, since you just output some text JS with your HTML, don't have to call back and render an image.

JFree also has Eastwood which is a reimplementation of Google Charts API, if you don't want to send your data to Google, or need SSL, though I don't think it's quite current, it's a good subset.

Answer 2

I recommend you to use matplotlib, it has high quality backends and a lot of graphical representations, you'll have the whole control over your plots and Python is a very handy and easy language to automatize tests, very practical for what you're willing to do. Matplotlib has also a large community that can help you and a lot of documentation/examples; just remember that matplotlib was not ported to Python 3.x yet, I don't know if this is important for you.

What I absolutely don't recommend is CairoPlot, it is not maintained anymore and is a toy project.