gvisMotionChart function

Google Motion Chart with R googleChartName <- "motionchart"

gvisChartName <- "gvisMotionChart"

The gvisMotionChart function reads a data.frame and creates text output referring to the Google Visualisation API, which can be included into a web page, or as a stand-alone page. The actual chart is rendered by the web browser in Flash. A motion chart is a dynamic chart to explore several indicators over time.

gvisMotionChart(
  data,
  idvar = "id",
  timevar = "time",
  xvar = "",
  yvar = "",
  colorvar = "",
  sizevar = "",
  date.format = "%Y/%m/%d",
  options = list(),
  chartid
)

Arguments

• data: a data.frame. The data has to have at least four columns with subject name (idvar), time (timevar) and two columns of numeric values. Further columns, numeric and character/factor are optional. The combination of idvar and timevar has to describe a unique row. The column names of the idvar and timevar have to be specified. Further columns, if not specified by the other arguments (xvar, yvar, colorvar, sizevar), will be assumed to be in the order of the arguments.

• idvar: column name of data with the subject to be analysed.

• timevar: column name of data which shows the time dimension. The information has to be either numeric, of class Date or a character which follows the pattern 'YYYYWww' (e.g. '2010W04' for weekly data) or 'YYYYQq' (e.g. '2010Q1' for quarterly data).

• xvar: column name of a numerical vector in data to be plotted on the x-axis.

• yvar: column name of a numerical vector in data to be plotted on the y-axis.

• colorvar: column name of data that identifies bubbles in the same series. Use the same value to identify all bubbles that belong to the same series; bubbles in the same series will be assigned the same color. Series can be configured using the series option.

• sizevar: values in this column are mapped to actual pixel values using the sizeAxis option.

• date.format: if timevar is of class Date

  then this argument specifies how the dates are reformatted to be used by JavaScript.

• options: list of configuration options for Google Motion Chart. The options are documented in detail by Google online:

  gsub("CHARTNAME", googleChartName, readLines(file.path(".", "inst","mansections", "GoogleChartToolsURLConfigOptions.txt")))

  paste(readLines(file.path(".", "inst", "mansections","gvisOptions.txt")))

• chartid: character. If missing (default) a random chart id will be generated based on chart type and tempfile

Returns

paste(gvisChartName) returns list of class

paste(readLines(file.path(".", "inst", "mansections","gvisOutputStructure.txt")))

Warnings

Because of Flash security settings the chart might not work correctly when accessed from a file location in the browser (e.g., file:///c:/webhost/myhost/myviz.html) rather than from a web server URL (e.g. https://www.myhost.com/myviz.html). See the googleVis package vignette and the Macromedia web site (https://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/) for more details.

Note

Please note that a timevar with values less than 100 will be shown as years 19xx.

Examples

## Please note that by default the googleVis plot command
## will open a browser window and requires Flash and Internet
## connection to display the visualisation.
M1 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Year")
plot(M1)

## Not run:

## Usage of date variable
M2 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Date",
                      date.format = "\\%Y\\%m\\%d") 
                      plot(M2)
                      
## Display weekly data:
M3 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Date", date.format="\\%YW\\%W")
plot(M3) 
## End(Not run)

## Options: no side panel on the right
M4 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits,"Fruit", "Year",
                      options=list(showSidePanel=FALSE))
plot(M4)

## Options: trails un-ticked
M5 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year",
                      options=list(state='{"showTrails":false};'))
                      
plot(M5)

## You can change some of displaying settings via the browser,
## e.g. the level of opacity of non-selected items, or the chart type.
## The state string from the 'Advanced' tab can be used to set those
## settings via R. Just copy and past the string from the browser into
## the argument state of the options list.
## Here is an example of a motion chart, with an initial line chart
## displayed. Ensure that you have a newline at the start and end of
## your settings string.

myStateSettings <-'
{"xZoomedDataMin":1199145600000,"colorOption":"2",
"duration":{"timeUnit":"Y","multiplier":1},"yLambda":1,
"yAxisOption":"4","sizeOption":"_UNISIZE",
"iconKeySettings":[],"xLambda":1,"nonSelectedAlpha":0,
"xZoomedDataMax":1262304000000,"iconType":"LINE",
"dimensions":{"iconDimensions":["dim0"]},
"showTrails":false,"uniColorForNonSelected":false,
"xAxisOption":"_TIME","orderedByX":false,"playDuration":15000,
"xZoomedIn":false,"time":"2010","yZoomedDataMin":0,
"yZoomedIn":false,"orderedByY":false,"yZoomedDataMax":100}
'
M6a <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year", 
                       options=list(state=myStateSettings))
plot(M6a)

## Newline set explicitly
myStateSettings <-'\n{"iconType":"LINE"}\n'
M6b <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, "Fruit", "Year", 
                       options=list(state=myStateSettings))
plot(M6b)

## Define which columns are used for the initial setup of the various
## dimensions
M7 <- gvisMotionChart(Fruits, idvar="Fruit", timevar="Year",
                      xvar="Profit", yvar="Expenses",
                      colorvar="Location", sizevar="Sales")
plot(M7)
## For more information see:
## https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart

## See also the demo(WorldBank). It demonstrates how you can access
## country level data from the World Bank to create Gapminder-like
## plots.

References

Google Chart Tools API: gsub("CHARTNAME", googleChartName, readLines(file.path(".", "inst","mansections", "GoogleChartToolsURL.txt")))

See Also

See also print.gvis, plot.gvis

for printing and plotting methods.

Author(s)

Markus Gesmann markus.gesmann@gmail.com , Diego de Castillo decastillo@gmail.com