Background and Wallpaper

This example demonstrates some of the background effects supported by ChartDirector.

ChartDirector supports using an image file as the wallpaper of the chart image background with BaseChart.setWallpaper, and as the plot area background with PlotArea.setBackground2.

In addition to wallpapers, ChartDirector supports alternating plot area background colors using PlotArea.setBackground and PlotArea.setAltBgColor.

You can switch the default colors to using a dark background with white lines and text in one step by changing the color palette to a whiteOnBlackPalette using BaseChart.setColors.

perldemo\background.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

# The ChartDirector for Perl module is assumed to be in "../lib"
use File::Basename;
use lib (dirname($0)."/../lib") =~ /(.*)/;

use perlchartdir;

sub createChart
{
    my $chartIndex = shift;

    # The data for the chart
    my $data = [85, 156, 179.5, 211, 123];
    my $labels = ["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri"];

    # Create a XYChart object of size 270 x 270 pixels
    my $c = new XYChart(270, 270);

    # Set the plot area at (40, 32) and of size 200 x 200 pixels
    my $plotarea = $c->setPlotArea(40, 32, 200, 200);

    # Set the background style based on the input parameter
    if ($chartIndex == 0) {
        # Has wallpaper image
        $c->setWallpaper("tile.png");
    } elsif ($chartIndex == 1) {
        # Use a background image as the plot area background
        $plotarea->setBackground2("bg.png");
    } elsif ($chartIndex == 2) {
        # Use white (0xffffff) and grey (0xe0e0e0) as two alternate plotarea background colors
        $plotarea->setBackground(0xffffff, 0xe0e0e0);
    } else {
        # Use a dark background palette
        $c->setColors($perlchartdir::whiteOnBlackPalette);
    }

    # Set the labels on the x axis
    $c->xAxis()->setLabels($labels);

    # Add a color bar layer using the given data. Use a 1 pixel 3D border for the bars.
    $c->addBarLayer3($data)->setBorderColor(-1, 1);

    # Output the chart
    $c->makeChart("background$chartIndex.png");
}

createChart(0);
createChart(1);
createChart(2);
createChart(3);