title: Graphing data, website views what platform to use
body: <p>I have been tasked with producing a analytic tool for some of the data which we get in about the activities the company i work for has with its clients. </p>
  
  <p>Last week i made a mock up view of one possible graph using some PHP and the Flot Jquery graphing tool. Unfortunatly I dont think I am going to be able to use flot for what i need in the long term as to make the graph i needed work I had to hack 8 divs one of top of the other otherwise i just got a flat line...</p>
  
  <p>So now i am looking at technologies to work with for this tool. One of the senior members here recommends using Django for the framework and do the graphs using reportlabs or matplotlib</p>
  
  <p>I have spent the last couple of days looking for decent tutorials on how to produce graphs using report labs or matplotlib and using django to display them, unfortunately  i havent been able to find much which is of any use.
  the 2 examples i found on the django site werent terriably useful and most examples give you something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    drawing = Drawing()
  data = [
          (13, 5, 20, 22, 37, 45, 19, 4),
          (14, 6, 21, 23, 38, 46, 20, 5)
          ]
  bc = VerticalBarChart()
  bc.x = 50
  bc.y = 50
  bc.height = 125
  bc.width = 300
  bc.data = data
  bc.strokeColor = colors.black
  bc.valueAxis.valueMin = 0
  bc.valueAxis.valueMax = 50
  bc.valueAxis.valueStep = 10
  bc.categoryAxis.labels.boxAnchor = 'ne'
  bc.categoryAxis.labels.dx = 8
  bc.categoryAxis.labels.dy = -2
  bc.categoryAxis.labels.angle = 30
  bc.categoryAxis.categoryNames = ['Jan-99','Feb-99','Mar-99',
      'Apr-99','May-99','Jun-99','Jul-99','Aug-99']
  drawing.add(bc)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but how do you then intergrate that with django`s views? this was my attempt which produced a blank screen...</p>
  
  <pre><code>def chartTest(request):
  
  import mycharts
  drawing = Drawing()
  d = mycharts.testChart(drawing)
  
  binaryStuff = d.asString('gif')
  
  return HttpResponse(binaryStuff,'image/gif')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I did manage to make matplotlib produce a graph but it had a grey background which for life of me I couldn't work out how to make it go away and found it hard looking on Google for any information about why it is like that.</p>
  
  <p>I am a little bit stuck atm, so if anyone has any ideas on where I can find helpful advice on learning these tools that would be most awesome.</p>
  
  <p>thanks</p>