While PHP excels at crunching and preparing data, it lacks native visualization capabilities. To display attractive charts or graphs, PHP developers typically rely on a visualization library like Chart.js combined with CSS styling.
But even using the same underlying charting library, visualizations can look boring or beautiful based on how well styling is applied. In this guide, we explore PHP chart integration options and techniques for customizing chart appearance to match application branding and aesthetics.
PHP Charting Libraries
Some popular JavaScript charting libraries that integrate smoothly with PHP include:
Chart.js
Open source with canvas rendering, Chart.js supports over 20 chart types with a clean documentation site featuring extensive customization examples. Lightweight yet very customizable.
D3.js
D3.js (Data Driven Documents) excels at data visualizations using SVG vector graphics. High complexity but virtually endless customization potential from axes to animations.
ApexCharts.js
ApexCharts focuses on modern, interactive charting optimized for dashboard applications. Offers themes, animations and responsiveness with reasonable customization.
FusionCharts
FusionCharts offers over 90 chart types with the option for paid enhanced or premium versions. Includes chart designer tool and PHP wrapper for integration.
Basic Styling Techniques
Before diving deep into customization, some basic universal styling techniques apply:
Following Brand Color Schemes
Match company or product color schemes by setting defined variables for elements like background canvas, borders, gridlines, fonts and data series colors.
Typography Treatments
Control all text styling like fonts, sizes, weights as well as axis tick mark formatting. White space balancing is also important.
Responsiveness First
With mobile usage dominating, responsive design ensures charts resize and reflow appropriately across all device sizes using relative units like vh, vw and % instead of fixed pixels.
Conveying Data Hierarchy
Smart visual hierarchy guides the viewer to most important data first via techniques like reduced opacity, differentiation and strategic ordering.
Advanced Customization
For more polished, unique charts, we can dive deeper into customization techniques like:
Theming Components
Most libraries allow setting themes to control styling of dozens of elements from chart area fill to tooltip style to font choices. Or create fully custom themes.
Animated Transitions
Subtly animate chart introduction, data changes, interactions and more based on configurable easing curves. Sparingly apply to guide attention.
Illustrative Styling
For a hand drawn or painted look, apply canvas texture fills, deckled label edges and natural brush stroke borders and shading.
Minimalist Design
Sometimes less is more. Restrict the chart to essentials only with no borders, axes or gridlines. Use negative space to add emphasis.
Exporting Charts
To reuse visualizations beyond websites, most PHP charting integrations allow exporting final charts as image files or PDF documents with custom styling baked in. Useful for reports.
Common export formats include PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF. Server side libraries like PHPExcel help export chart data to Excel documents.
Conclusion
The journey from raw data to compelling, custom styled data visualizations requires careful selection of an appropriate PHP charting library combined with generous CSS treatments.
Prioritize responsiveness, color schemes and hierarchy to allow data patterns and insights to shine clearly through the design. With practice, your PHP apps can deliver analytics and dashboards as beautiful as they are functional.