thoughts on visualizing time data

[Terry Middleton]

I'm trying to take an xml file that includes data spanning a period of time (40 minutes) and show an animated progression of what happened (data) over the 40 minutes.

I have the data, I'm thinking that Google Visualization API is the right choice but not sure, and it looks like I can write some php to read the data and fee to the api.  

Am I even thinking in the right direction?  There's probably a 1000 ways to solve, I'm just looking for one that is simple to implement.

Terry

[Ray Thomas]

Hello Terry,

I've used the API for several years now on various sites and found it ideal for what I use it for. The charts can be manipulated using CSS and JavaScript and my only worries about using it is that it doesn't seem as popular as it was and Google has a nasty habit of either making things no longer free or taking them away altogether, but I have not heard of anything like that happening to the API.

If you don't like the look of one type of chart it is easily changed to another.

As far as I know the API cannot handle XML files on its own, but there are several PHP scripts around that can read the files and change them to JSON. A quick search found https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8830599/php-convert-xml-to-json and https://lostechies.com/seanbiefeld/2011/10/21/simple-xml-to-json-with-php/

Ray