Question

I’m pretty new to Javascript, Rails and JQuery all working together.

I’m going through this tutorial (http://www.highcharts.com/documentation/how-to-use#installation) on Highcharts and just trying to get a base graph to show. It’s not happening.

In my home.html.erb file I have:

<div id="container" style="width: 100%; height: 400px"></div>

In app/views/layouts/application.html.erb I have this in my head tag:

  <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
  <script src="/public/highcharts.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

And this is the code in /public/highcharts.js:

var chart1; // globally available
$(document).ready(function() {
      chart1 = new Highcharts.Chart({
         chart: {
            renderTo: 'container',
            type: 'bar'
         },
         title: {
            text: 'Fruit Consumption'
         },
         xAxis: {
            categories: ['Apples', 'Bananas', 'Oranges']
         },
         yAxis: {
            title: {
               text: 'Fruit eaten'
            }
         },
         series: [{
            name: 'Jane',
            data: [1, 0, 4]
         }, {
            name: 'John',
            data: [5, 7, 3]
         }]
      });
   });

Nothing is showing up when I load the page and I have no idea why. I’ve done the tutorial 3 or 4 times and Googled around for the answer to no avail. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Edit: I changed the path in the script tag from /public/highcharts.js to /highcharts.js. That gave me the following errors in my Console Debugger:

Uncaught ReferenceError: Highcharts is not defined highcharts.js:3
(anonymous function) highcharts.js:3
f.Callbacks.n jquery.min.js:2
f.Callbacks.o.fireWith jquery.min.js:2
e.extend.ready jquery.min.js:2
c.addEventListener.B

Answer 1

As we discussed in chat, there were a few missing pieces.

• You needed a local copy of the Highcharts library
• You needed to reference your script that calls the library from the
  correct place.

So, in short, you needed this in your layout:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
<script src="/javascripts/js/highcharts.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <!--where you put the high charts library -->
<script src="/highcharts.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <!-- your script -->

Now going forward (assuming you are working w/ rails 3.1+), I’d suggest moving your javascripts to a more conventional location. In 3.1, rails likes to see it in app/assets/javascripts but public/javascripts is still fine, just not exactly conventional.

You will get a lot of milage by understanding the rails helpers to insert script tags and the Asset Pipeline.

Good luck!