| Frequently asked questions | |
| -------------------------- | |
| Q: How much data can Flot cope with? | |
| A: Flot will happily draw everything you send to it so the answer | |
| depends on the browser. The excanvas emulation used for IE (built with | |
| VML) makes IE by far the slowest browser so be sure to test with that | |
| if IE users are in your target group. | |
| 1000 points is not a problem, but as soon as you start having more | |
| points than the pixel width, you should probably start thinking about | |
| downsampling/aggregation as this is near the resolution limit of the | |
| chart anyway. If you downsample server-side, you also save bandwidth. | |
| Q: Flot isn't working when I'm using JSON data as source! | |
| A: Actually, Flot loves JSON data, you just got the format wrong. | |
| Double check that you're not inputting strings instead of numbers, | |
| like [["0", "-2.13"], ["5", "4.3"]]. This is most common mistake, and | |
| the error might not show up immediately because Javascript can do some | |
| conversion automatically. | |
| Q: Can I export the graph? | |
| A: This is a limitation of the canvas technology. There's a hook in | |
| the canvas object for getting an image out, but you won't get the tick | |
| labels. And it's not likely to be supported by IE. At this point, your | |
| best bet is probably taking a screenshot, e.g. with PrtScn. | |
| Q: The bars are all tiny in time mode? | |
| A: It's not really possible to determine the bar width automatically. | |
| So you have to set the width with the barWidth option which is NOT in | |
| pixels, but in the units of the x axis (or the y axis for horizontal | |
| bars). For time mode that's milliseconds so the default value of 1 | |
| makes the bars 1 millisecond wide. | |
| Q: Can I use Flot with libraries like Mootools or Prototype? | |
| A: Yes, Flot supports it out of the box and it's easy! Just use jQuery | |
| instead of $, e.g. call jQuery.plot instead of $.plot and use | |
| jQuery(something) instead of $(something). As a convenience, you can | |
| put in a DOM element for the graph placeholder where the examples and | |
| the API documentation are using jQuery objects. | |
| Depending on how you include jQuery, you may have to add one line of | |
| code to prevent jQuery from overwriting functions from the other | |
| libraries, see the documentation in jQuery ("Using jQuery with other | |
| libraries") for details. | |
| Q: Flot doesn't work with [widget framework xyz]! | |
| A: The problem is most likely within the framework, or your use of the | |
| framework. | |
| The only non-standard thing used by Flot is the canvas tag; otherwise | |
| it is simply a series of absolute positioned divs within the | |
| placeholder tag you put in. If this is not working, it's probably | |
| because the framework you're using is doing something weird with the | |
| DOM. As a last resort, you might try replotting and see if it helps. | |
| If you find there's a specific thing we can do to Flot to help, feel | |
| free to submit a bug report. Otherwise, you're welcome to ask for help | |
| on the mailing list, but please don't submit a bug report to Flot - | |
| try the framework instead. | |