Morris.js: beautiful graphics tool with jQuery and Raphaël

The issue of “Mozilla Hacks Weekly” the day before yesterday saw a “ Morris.js ” hyperlink, followed it, read it, was glad - and now I will tell you.

Morris is a lightweight javascript (only 3052 bytes after miniaturization) with open source (distributed under the simplified BSD license), which requires jQuery and Raphaël to work with and builds graphs on a simple grid of horizontal lines, like this:


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Time is plotted on the abscissa axis, any time- dependent values ​​are plotted on the ordinate axis. (Morris was originally designed for a site that shows the total number of cars of a particular brand in the UK, so it’s natural for him that the abscissa axis is the time axis.)

The graphs react to the mouse: the points that correspond to the time point indicated by the mouse swell up, and hints appear next to them.

The advantage of the script is the simplicity of the API. The example I gave is created by this call:

//  ,  ,       Morris.Line({ element: 'quarterly', data: [ {q: '2009 Q3', a: 100, b: 75}, {q: '2010 Q2', a: 75, b: 50}, {q: '2010 Q3', a: 75, b: 50}, {q: '2011 Q1', a: 50, b: 25}, {q: '2011 Q3', a: 50, b: 25}, {q: '2011 Q4', a: 75, b: 50}, {q: '2012 Q2', a: 100, b: 75} ], xkey: 'q', ykeys: ['a', 'b'], labels: ['Series A', 'Series B'], lineColors: ['#167f39','#044c29'], lineWidth: 2 }); 

All the necessary details of using the API are set forth in the original source in sufficient detail - you probably won't need to pry into the open source.

The only thing that “Morris”, in my opinion, lacks, is the vertical lines perpendicular to the horizontal. So that the connection of values ​​from the same time is immediately revealed, and not only when the mouse is moved.

I also foresee that for someone the outcome of the work of Morris will seem overly simple. They, however, will always be able to resort to the help of gRaphaël and, thus, create a few more sophisticated graphics.