how do i create charts from a cvs file using ruby

Question

csv sample:

Date,128,440,1024,Mixed 6/30/2010,342,-0.26%,-0.91%,1.51%,-0.97% 6/24/2010,0.23%,0.50%,-1.34%,0.67%

i want to render this data in a multi-line graph

Answer 1

Well, you first need to parse the CSV. I suggest FasterCSV - the RDoc explains pretty much everything you need to know.

You'll need to have ImageMagick and RMagick installed, then you can use Gruff. Or if you've got an Internet connection on the machine you are running the script on, you can use Google Charts with this Ruby plugin. Or if you want to get back SVG, consider Scruffy.

The page about Gruff has a code sample showing how to create a multi-line graph. Basically, you need to collect together all the data you want in each line into an array. Looks basically like the primary thing you need to do is array mangling.