Unlocking Data Visualization with Google Charts and React

What is Google Charts?

Google Charts is a free, modern, and actively-maintained JavaScript charting service from Google that is efficient and easy to use in projects. It offers an extensive set of customization options and a rich chart gallery with many options to choose from. Google Charts is compatible with a wide range of devices, has cross-browser compatibility and cross-platform capabilities, and uses HTML and SVG, eliminating the need for additional plugins.

Setting up the Project

To use Google Charts in a React application, start by setting up a React app and installing the react-google-charts package. This package is a modern, well-maintained, thin, typed, React wrapper for Google Charts that makes it easy for developers to use React with Google Charts.

npm install react-google-charts

Creating Your First Chart

To begin designing the interface, open the project in a text editor and remove all code inside the return method in the src/App.js file. Next, create a new file called charts.js in the src directory and build your charts. Import react-google-charts and get the Chart property. Create a data variable to house the data to be displayed on the chart, and customize the chart as needed.

import { Chart } from 'react-google-charts';

const data = [
  ['Year', 'Sales'],
  ['2015', 100],
  ['2016', 200],
  ['2017', 300],
];

const options = {
  title: 'Sales by Year',
  hAxis: { title: 'Year' },
  vAxis: { title: 'Sales' },
};

const ChartComponent = () => {
  return (
    
  );
};

Visualizing Your Chart

Run the server to preview the app, and see what you’ve built so far. The chart should be interactive and easy to generate with just a few lines of code.

Manipulating Your Chart using React Hooks

Use React Hooks to keep track of changes and pass data down as props to components. Create a data source, such as a JSON file, and use the useState Hook to keep track of the data to be passed down to components. Create a button that fetches this data and updates the Hook.

import { useState, useEffect } from 'react';

const [data, setData] = useState([]);

useEffect(() => {
  const fetchData = async () => {
    const response = await fetch('data.json');
    const jsonData = await response.json();
    setData(jsonData);
  };
  fetchData();
}, []);

const handleClick = () => {
  // Update the data here
  setData([...data, { year: 2020, sales: 400 }]);
};

Using Multiple Charts

Update the App.js file to include multiple charts, and pass the required data to each chart as props. Use a map function to loop through the data and show the resulting charts.

import React from 'react';
import ChartComponent from './ChartComponent';

const App = () => {
  const data = [
    { year: 2015, sales: 100 },
    { year: 2016, sales: 200 },
    { year: 2017, sales: 300 },
  ];

  return (

  );
};