Is there a Quickchart alternative?

[Pierre_de_Man]

Hi Gliders,
Last year, I created a simple app to keep track of some health-related data.
Things like my blood pressure, pulse, weight, and one more item.
For this, I could enter the requested data and it would show a chart that was created with Quickchart.
From January 3 until March 1, I was in the hospital because of a serious health problem.
During this time I did not use the app. Now that I am home and slowly trying to recover from all that had happened, I am starting to use the app again.
The first time I used the app again, the chart was not showing.
I thought that maybe I needed to use it maybe for a week and hopefully, it would work again.
This is because I was tracking/showing the last entered 7 days of data in the chart.
But now after one week, it still did not work. So I started to check the link that I used for Quickchart.
To my surprise, I saw that they had changed the layout of the site and also the way you have to use it. Old-created links would not work anymore.
It looks like it had become more complex.
For now, I have turned off the chart and now I was wondering if maybe anyone knows of a free and easy site to create line charts.
(Or maybe Glide has a built-in option to do this?)
In the last two months, I lost track of all the new and latest developments of Glide.
Many thanks in advance for all your help, time, and effort.

[Jeff_Hager]

It would be helpful if your shared a url that’s not working. All of my charts still work. Maybe we can spot something wrong in the url.

[Pierre_de_Man]

Hi @Jeff_Hager ,
Here is one of the links;
https://quickchart.io/chart/render/zm-3a165948-14da-4155-aa85-26ba1d8f666b?data1=75.5, 75.6, 76.2, 76.3, 77.3, 77.3, 76.9&labels=04/03/2023, 05/03/2023, 06/03/2023, 07/03/2023, 08/03/2023, 09/03/2023, 10/03/2023

This should show my weight in a line chart.
Thanks in advance.

[Jeff_Hager]

Seems like you may have taken a different approach to building that url, compared to how most of us do it. Where did that random code between ‘render’ and ‘data’ come from? Usually I’d expect to see something that indicates the chart type, some colors, and things like that. You just have that code, which looks like some sort of key.

Do you happen to have any old screenshots of what the chart looked like?

[Darren_Murphy]

@Jeff_Hager

Where did that random code between ‘render’ and ‘data’ come from?

It’s a chart maker template.
Looks like either the template URL is wrong, or the template has disappeared.
It might be that quickchart purges template URL’s if they aren’t in use?

I’d also be a little suspicious of that date formatting. It’s not hard to imagine that those forward slashes could trip things up.

[Jeff_Hager]

Ahh, never used quickchart templates before. I would guess they expired. Maybe if they weren’t used for a few months???

@Darren_Murphy

also be a little suspicious of that date formatting

I thought that too, but I think since we are in the query parameters, it works and the browser just does the url encoding. I would probably still use a construct url column though.

[Pierre_de_Man]

Everything worked until January 3.
From that date, I had to stay in the hospital and did not use the app.
Sorry but I don’t have an “old” screenshot.

March 2 I started to use the app again, and from that moment on, it did not work.
So somewhere between Jan 3 and March 2, Quickchart did something.

To generate the chart, I had used the Quickchart Chart maker.
Once you had a nice chart, I just copied the generated URL and placed my data in there from the last 7 days.

It could be what @Darren_Murphy said. Maybe they had purged unused templates.
That means that I need to recreate a new template.
But it looks like they had changed the whole layout of their site, so I need more time to figure it out again.
That is also why I am looking if there maybe is something else that is free and easy.

[Jeff_Hager]

I can take a look later and give you a different url that should work and shouldn’t expire.

When you use the sandbox, it generates a url that doesn’t rely on an API template, so it should always work and never expire.

Chart.js Sandbox Editor

[Jeff_Hager]

Sorry for the delay. Here’s something that should work for you. It should be similar, but without the need for a quickchart template because all of the necessary parameters are contained within the URL.

Here is the resulting image.

Here is how I have the template column configured. You will notice that I just manually filled in the replacement values instead of referring to columns. Obviously you will need to point the replacements to your appropriate columns. Also, it’s required that each date is wrapped in single quotes. You may have to create a template column in your table that contains the dates to join the date with single quotes.

Here is the value for the chart url that you can copy.

https://quickchart.io//chart?c=
{
  type: 'line',
  data: {
    labels: [{dates}],
    datasets: [
      {
        label: 'Weight',
        backgroundColor: 'rgb(0, 255, 255)',
        borderColor: 'rgb(0, 0, 255)',
        data: [{weights}],
        fill: false,
      },

    ],
  },
  options: {
    title: {
      display: true,
      text: 'Weight Chart',
    },
    "scales": {     
    }
  },
}

Hope that helps.

[Pierre_de_Man]

@Jeff_Hager , Wow.
Thank you so much.
Later today I will have a look at it.
I am also using a chart with two lines.
I use it for my blood pressure.
Once I figure out your suggestion, I will try to see if I also could get it to work with two lines in the chart.
I will let you know later how things went.
Again, thanks.

[Pierre_de_Man]

I tried your sample, and this is what I got;

Instead of showing the date, it is showing numbers.

This is what I have in my data layout;

The weight is shown okay. It is the dates that are not correct.
Maybe you have some idea what I did wrong?
What I noticed, is that your dates have single quotes, and I don’t have this.
I think it is trying to dived all the numbers.
I am using a joined list, but I am not sure how to get the dates in single quotes.

[Pierre_de_Man]

@Jeff_Hager ,
Sorry, but here is one more update.
After a hard and long thought process, I was able to “convert” a regular date into a date between single quotes.
With a joined list, I was able to get the numbers, into actual dates.
Now it looks correct

That two months in the hospital had slowed me down and it takes time to get things straight, in my mind.
I need more practice

Thanks for your time and effort.
Now I need to change 2-3 more charts and figure out how to get a 2line chart.
But the start is there

[Jeff_Hager]

@Pierre_de_Man

I was able to “convert” a regular date into a date between single quotes.

Yes, it does seem that the single quotes are required.

@Pierre_de_Man

how to get a 2line chart.

Here is a sample that will give you two lines in the same chart. Notice that you can add multiple datasets. I added Blood Pressure (made up numbers). You can also give each dataset a yAxisID. That ID will be used in the ‘options’ to help set the position of the labels. I put one label on the left and one on the right. Hope that helps.

https://quickchart.io//chart?c=
{
  type: 'line',
  data: {
    labels: [{dates}],
    datasets: [
      {
        label: 'Weight',
        backgroundColor: 'rgb(0, 255, 255)',
        borderColor: 'rgb(0, 0, 255)',
        data: [{weights}],
        fill: false,
        yAxisID: 'y1',
      },
      {
        label: 'Blood Pressure',
        backgroundColor: 'rgb(255, 255, 0)',
        borderColor: 'rgb(255, 0, 0)',
        data: [{bloodpressure}],
        fill: false,
        yAxisID: 'y2',
      },
    ],
  },
  options: {
    title: {
      display: true,
      text: 'Chart Title',
    },
    scales: {
      yAxes: [
      {
        id: 'y1',
        position: 'left',
      }, 
      {
        id: 'y2',
        position: 'right',
       },
      ]
    },
  },
}

[Pierre_de_Man]

Thanks, will try it later today.

[Pierre_de_Man]

As I mentioned before, the first chart was working fine.
Today I did a second chart, also fine.
But the third is giving an error;

I did everything the same as the first two.
I also checked for all single quotes and commas but it all looks correct.
I double-checked the joined lists and did not see anything wrong. I cannot find any comma or single quote out of place.
Any idea?

this is how I used it in a template column;

And these are my joined lists;

Maybe you can see something that I am missing.
Thanks in advance.

(Update: I found my mistake. I was not using the right replacement names. I had to place them in {} and that is what I forgot.)

[Pierre_de_Man]

Sorry, sorry.
I saw my last mistake and why the last chart was not working.
In the template I had to use {dates} and {inr}
And I used dates and inr.
Everything is working fine now.
This shows again, a small moment of not paying attention to small details can lead to strange things.

Also the double line chart is working great.
I only changed it to one Y axe ID, it was a little bit better for me.

Again, many thanks for all your time and effort for this.

[Jeff_Hager]

Ahh, you missed the curly brackets. I didn’t catch that. I copied your template, but I had just put the values straight into the url and it was working for me, so I didn’t try with replacement values.

Glad you figured it out.