PHPmyGraph: send an array with GET - php

Question

I could not find any answer to my question.
I'm using PhPmyGraph ( http://phpmygraph.abisvmm.nl/ ) to display a graph of some data from my databases.
The problem is that I have to create my arrays in the file itself, and if I want 2 graphs on the page I need to create 2 different files.
Apparently the file is easier to use with a CMS but I'm not using one.
This is the file graph.php:
<?php
//Set content-type header for the graphs
header("Content-type: image/png");
//Include phpMyGraph5.0.php
include_once('../phpMyGraph5.0.php');
//Set config directives
$cfg['title'] = 'Example graph';
$cfg['width'] = 500;
$cfg['height'] = 250;
//Set data
$data = array(
'Jan' => 12,
'Nov' => 78,
'Dec' => 23
);
//Create phpMyGraph instance
$graph = new phpMyGraph();
//Parse
$graph->parseVerticalPolygonGraph($data, $cfg);
?>
I call it in my page index.php:
echo " < img src=\"graph.php\"> ";
Is there another way to do it? And send the data from index.php to graph.php?
Or maybe move the code graph.php into index.php ? The problem is for the image object, I don't really know how to do it!
UPDATE:
I have almost found a solution, my code is now:
in graph.php:
//Parse
$graph->parseVerticalPolygonGraph(unserialize($_GET['data']), $cfg);
index.php :
$select_daily = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table");
while ($row_daily = mysql_fetch_assoc($select_daily) ){
$y = substr($row_daily['ymd'], 0, -4); // Year
$m = substr($row_daily['ymd'], 4, -2); // Month
$d = substr($row_daily['ymd'], -2); // Day
$key = $d."/".$m."/".$y;
$data_daily [$key] = $row_daily['members'];
}
foreach($data_daily as $key => $value) {
echo $key ,' : ', $value ,'<br/>';
}
echo "< img src=\"graph.php?data=".serialize($data_daily)."\">";
But I get the error "provided data is not an array"
I can't see what's wrong with it?
if I do var_dump($data_daily) I get:
array(8) { ["14/12/2011"]=> string(1) "0" ["13/12/2011"]=> string(2)
"11" ["12/12/2011"]=> string(1) "0" ["11/12/2011"]=> string(1) "2"
["10/12/2011"]=> string(1) "9" ["09/12/2011"]=> string(1) "3"
["08/12/2011"]=> string(1) "6" ["07/12/2011"]=> string(1) "6" }
UPDATE2:
var_dump($data1); gives:
array(12) { ["Jan"]=> int(12) ["Feb"]=>
int(25) ["Mar"]=> int(0) ["Apr"]=> int(7) ["May"]=> int(80) ["Jun"]=>
int(67) ["Jul"]=> int(45) ["Aug"]=> int(66) ["Sep"]=> int(23)
["Oct"]=> int(23) ["Nov"]=> int(78) ["Dec"]=> int(23) }
and var_dump($s_data1 = serialize($data1)) gives:
a:12:s:3:"Jan";i:12;s:3:"Feb";i:25;s:3:"Mar";i:0;s:3:"Apr";i:7;s:3:"May";i:80;s:3:"Jun";i:67;s:3:"Jul";i:45;s:3:"Aug";i:66;s:3:"Sep";i:23;s:3:"Oct";i:23;s:3:"Nov";i:78;s:3:"Dec";i:23;}
Then unserialize($s_data1); gives the same thing than $data1
So the argument 1 of the parse should be correct... I can’t see what is wrong
I finally gave up and loaded my arrays in graph.php:
if ($_GET['data'] == 'daily'){
$cfg['title'] = 'daily';
$graph->parseVerticalPolygonGraph($data_daily, $cfg);
}
And I call the file like that:
echo "<img src=\"graph.php?data=daily\">";
Thanks for your help anyway

Answer 1

I previously needed a page to display multiple graphs using phpMyGraph and the approach I took was to use data URI's and php's ob_start() and ob_get_clean()
Simply use this for each graph:
ob_start();
$graph->parseVerticalPolygonGraph($data, $cfg);
$img = ob_get_clean();
echo "<img src='data:image/gif;base64," . base64_encode($img) . "/>";
I recommend using gif's for the format since that way your page size will not be huge, you can do this by setting $cfg["type"] to "gif" (See here http://phpmygraph.abisvmm.nl/#ConfigDirectives)
This will also reduce the overhead of multiple requests and prevent hotlinking to the images.
You can read more about data URI's here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

Answer 2

you might want to try
echo "< img src=\"graph.php?data=".urlencode(serialize($data_daily))."\">"
I might be misunderstanding which script is throwing the error, however (I'm presuming that it's graph.php that's giving you the provided data is not an array).

Answer 3

Try using json instead of serialize
echo "< img src=\"graph.php?data=".urlencode(json_encode($data_daily))."\">"
$graph->parseVerticalPolygonGraph(json_decode($_GET['data'],true), $cfg);
I see no reason for this to throw an error.