Question

Basicly, I need a tool that can draw realtime graphs for a collected data that calculated by a node server.

I tried to install Graphite, but got no luck on the installation(newbie in linux results too much dependencies installation failures). So I’m looking for if there are other tools can do the similar jobb with easy install guide?

I also looked abit highcharts, but there is barely any documentation for node.js. If anyone has experienced these tools and give some advices would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Without knowing what kind of analytics data you are calculating and what type of graph you are using it is a little difficult to give you a good example. But here it is anyway, this is for a simple scenario.

When the server changes some analytics data, use socket.io to send a message to the client, containing the new analytics data. Something like this:

io.sockets.emit('analyticsUpdate', x, y);

On the client, create your Highcharts graph as normal but then add a load() event to the chart options, and use socket.io to retrieve the new data and update your chart like so:

    var chart;
    chart = new Highcharts.Chart({
        chart: {
            renderTo: 'container',
            type: 'spline',
            events: {
                load: function() {
                    socket.on('analyticsUpdate', function (x, y) {
                         // Simple case where you have a single series
                         // and your data can simply be appended to the series

                         var series = this.series[0];
                         series.addPoint([x, y], true, true);
                    };
                }
            }
        }
    });

So whenever the server updates some analytics data, socket.io emits a message. The client is always listening for messages from the server, and so whenever it receives a new message it updates the graph.