AnyChart Export Server

AnyChart Export Server is a tool that is helps to export charts to PNG, JPG, PDF, SVG, CSV, Excel, JSON, and XML. You can read the full description in AnyChart Export Server Documentation.

Setup

Export server can use PhantomJS, headless Firefox or headless Chrome/Chromium.

# use -e or --engine flag to specify browser engine
java -jar anychart-export.jar cmd -e firefox --script "var chart = anychart.line([1,2,5]); chart.container('container'); chart.draw();"

Default browser engine is PhantomJS.

If you need to take a screenshot of a page on the Internet or of a local HTML file, you can just use Chrome or Firefox in headless mode without AnyChart Export Server. You can read about that headless Chrome documentation, for Chrome and in headless Firefox documentation, for Firefox. Don't forget to use file:/// prefix for rendering local HTML files.

PhantomJS install

Download and install PhantomJS to you PC from the PhantomJS official site.

Add PhantomJS binary to the PATH.

Check if it works properly:

$ phantomjs -v
2.1.1

Firefox install

Install Firefox browser (version 56.0 and above).

For Debian-based Linux distros:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox -y

To check Firefox version:

$ firefox -v
Mozilla Firefox 60.0.1

To check if the browser works properly:

$ firefox -headless -screenshot https://developer.mozilla.com

A screenshot of Mozilla site must appear in your working directory.

Install geckodriver. For Mac, use:

$ brew install geckodriver

If you use Linux or Windows, you can download it from the geckodriver official site

Add it to the PATH.

To check if it is installed properly, use the next command:

$ geckodriver --version
geckodriver 0.19.1

Now you are ready to lauch the AnyChart Export Server.

Chrome/Chromium install

Install Chrome or Chromium browser (version 60.0 and above).

For Debian-based Linux distros we suggest to install Chromium:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install chromium-browser -y

To check Chromium version, type:

$ chromium-browser --version
Chromium 66.0.3359.181 Built on Ubuntu , running on Ubuntu 16.04

To check the browser works properly, use:

$ chromium-browser --headless --no-sandbox --disable-gpu http://google.com   

A screenshot of the Google site must appear in your working directory.

Install chromedriver. For Mac, use:

$ brew install chromedriver

If you use Linux or Windows, download it from the chromedriver official site.

Add the binary to the PATH.

To check if it is installed properly, use:

$ chromedriver -v
ChromeDriver 2.38.552522 (437e6fbedfa8762dec75e2c5b3ddb86763dc9dcb)

Now you are ready to launch the AnyChart Export Server.

Requests

AnyChart Export Server supports the following requests:

URL	Type	Description
/status	GET or POST	Server status
/png	POST	Export to PNG
/jpg	POST	Export to JPG
/svg	POST	Export to SVG
/pdf	POST	Export to PDF
/xml	POST	Export to XML
/json	POST	Export to JSON
/csv	POST	Export to CSV
/xlsx	POST	Export to XLSX
/sharing/twitter	POST	Twitter Sharing request
/sharing/twitter_oauth	GET	Twitter Sharing OAuth callback
/sharing/twitter_confirm	POST	Twitter Sharing posting confirmation

Typical Export and Twitter Sharing request contains the parameters listed below:

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
data	required	-	script or SVG that should be transformed into a picture
data-type	required	-	a field that contains the information about the data, it might be "script" or "svg"
response-type	required	-	a field that tells how to export the result (file or as base64)
file-name	optional	anychart	file name
save	optional	-	if it presents, request returns URL of a saved image
container-id	optional	container	div container id
container-width	optional	100%	div container width
container-height	optional	100%	div container height
width	optional	1024	image width
height	optional	800	image height
quality	optional	1	picture quality
force-transparent-white	optional	false	make the background white or leave it transparent
pdf-size	optional	-	the *.pdf-document sheet size
pdf-x	optional	0	x of the chart in the *.pdf document
pdf-y	optional	0	y of the chart in the *.pdf document
pdf-width	optional	595	pdf width
pdf-height	optional	842	pdf height
landscape	optional	false	the document orientation

Config file format

AnyChart Export Server provides an ability to pass all parameters in a config file using TOML format:

# can be "server" or "cmd"
mode = "server"
engine = "firefox"

[server]
port = 80
host = "0.0.0.0"
allow-scripts-executing = false
log = "/path/to/log/file"

[server.images]
# folder to save images
folder = "/export-server/shared"
# prefix which will be returned when saving image
prefix = "http://static.example.com/shared/"

[server.sharing]
# MySQL settings
port = 3306
db = "shared_db"
user = "export_server_user"
password = "export_server_password"

[server.sharing.twitter]
# settings from twitter app settings for sharing in Twitter
key = "key"
secret = "secret"
callback = "http://example.com/sharing/twitter_oauth"

[cmd] 
# here you can pass cmd options for mode = "cmd"
script = "var chart = anychart.line([1,2,5]); chart.container('container'); chart.draw();" 
output-file = "anychart"
output-path = ""
container-width = "1024px"
container-height = "800px"
container-id = "container"
input-file = "file.name"
type = "png"
image-width = 1024
image-height = 800
force-transparent-white = false
pdf-size = "a4"
pdf-x = 0
pdf-y = 0
pdf-width  = 500
pdf-height = 500
jpg-quality = 1

You can pass a config file with -C option, like this:

java -jar export-server.jar -C settings.toml

Sharing

The AnyChart Export Server provides an ability to share chart images in social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. When you use the Export Server on your own server and you want the sharing to work properly, you should set up --saving-folder and --saving-prefix. The first parameter is the path to the folder where images will be stored. The second parameter is the URL prefix which will be concatenated with a shared image name and returned to a user. You should provide the access to shared image through that URL by setting up Nginx, for example.

Sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

Sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest is implemented with the help of the commands for saving images. These social networks get the prepared picture via the link and just allow the user to post it on the page.

Sharing on Twitter

Sharing images on Twitter is implemented with the AnyChart Twitter app. It requires MySQL database to be set up and uses three types of requests.

/sharing/twitter

First of all, the user sends a request to /sharing/twitter that contains SVG or script from which the image will be generated and posted on the page - the request should contain the same parameters as a request to /png URL does.

There are two options here: the user is authorized in the AnyChart Twitter application or not.

If the user isn't authorized, the Twitter Authorization dialog will be displayed. The user should confirm that he gives the app the rights to post the image. After that, the user will be redirected to the /sharing/twitter_oauth callback.

/sharing/twitter_oauth

This request accepts oauth_token and oauth_verifier parameters, you can read about OAuth here. In the handler of /sharing/twitter_oauth request, the Export Server gets such params as oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, user_id, screen_name, image_url (user picture) and user_name and saves them to the MySQL database. After that, the dialog window of posting images will be displayed.

If the user is already authorized in the app, the posting dialog will be displayed immediately. When the user confirms to post the image and clicks the TWEET button, there will be a request to /sharing/twitter_confirm .

/sharing/twitter_confirm

This request should contain Twitter message parameter only - a string of no more than 140 characters. In the handler of /sharing/twitter_confirm request, the Export Server uploads the shared image with Twitter API and posts a new tweet with that image.

Note: the /sharing/twitter_oauth and /sharing/twitter_confirm requests are used inside Export server, which means you don't need to send anything by yourself there.

If you want Twitter sharing to work through your server, you should:

1. create your own Twitter App and provide twitter_key, twitter_secret and twitter_callback (last path of which is always /sharing/twitter_oauth) to the Export Server.
2. setup a MySQL database for Twitter sharing using SQL scheme.
3. setup a Twitter sharing URL separately when setting the anychart.export.server() URL:

anychart.exports.twitter(
    "http://your.export.server.url/sharing/twitter", 
    "1000",    
    "500"
);

For more details check out AnyChart Sharing API.

License

© AnyChart.com - JavaScript charts. Export Server released under the Apache 2.0 License.