Soft Multi-Bar Chart

This example demonstrates a multi-bar chart with soft lighting effects for bars and gradient color for plot area background.

Soft lighting is a special shading effect that look like gradient coloring. In this example, soft lighting effect is applied to the bars with the light coming from the left direction.

The gradient plot area background is configured by using BaseChart.linearGradientColor to define the gradient color, then use XYChart.setPlotArea to apply it to the plot area.
The XYChart.setPlotArea also sets the plot area border and grid line colors to white.
The soft lighting effect of the bars is defined using Chart.softLighting, then applied to the bars using Layer.setBorderColor.

See Soft Bar Shading for another example of soft lighting effect with the light coming from the left direction.

[JSP Version] jspdemo/softmultibar.jsp

<%@page import="ChartDirector.*, java.util.*" %>
<%
// The data for the bar chart
double[] data0 = {100, 125, 245, 147, 67};
double[] data1 = {85, 156, 179, 211, 123};
double[] data2 = {97, 87, 56, 267, 157};
String[] labels = {"Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thur", "Fri"};

// Create a XYChart object of size 540 x 375 pixels
XYChart c = new XYChart(540, 375);

// Add a title to the chart using 18pt Times Bold Italic font
c.addTitle("Average Weekly Network Load", "Times New Roman Bold Italic", 18);

// Set the plotarea at (50, 55) and of 440 x 280 pixels in size. Use a vertical gradient color from
// light red (ffdddd) to dark red (880000) as background. Set border and grid lines to white
// (ffffff).
c.setPlotArea(50, 55, 440, 280, c.linearGradientColor(0, 55, 0, 335, 0xffdddd, 0x880000), -1,
    0xffffff, 0xffffff);

// Add a legend box at (50, 25) using horizontal layout. Use 10pt Arial Bold as font, with
// transparent background.
c.addLegend(50, 25, false, "Arial Bold", 10).setBackground(Chart.Transparent);

// Set the x axis labels
c.xAxis().setLabels(labels);

// Draw the ticks between label positions (instead of at label positions)
c.xAxis().setTickOffset(0.5);

// Set axis label style to 8pt Arial Bold
c.xAxis().setLabelStyle("Arial Bold", 8);
c.yAxis().setLabelStyle("Arial Bold", 8);

// Set axis line width to 2 pixels
c.xAxis().setWidth(2);
c.yAxis().setWidth(2);

// Add axis title
c.yAxis().setTitle("Throughput (MBytes Per Hour)");

// Add a multi-bar layer with 3 data sets and 4 pixels 3D depth
BarLayer layer = c.addBarLayer2(Chart.Side, 4);
layer.addDataSet(data0, 0xffff00, "Server #1");
layer.addDataSet(data1, 0x00ff00, "Server #2");
layer.addDataSet(data2, 0x9999ff, "Server #3");

// Set bar border to transparent. Use soft lighting effect with light direction from top.
layer.setBorderColor(Chart.Transparent, Chart.softLighting(Chart.Top));

// Configure the bars within a group to touch each others (no gap)
layer.setBarGap(0.2, Chart.TouchBar);

// Output the chart
WebChartViewer viewer = new WebChartViewer(request, "chart1");
viewer.setChart(c, Chart.SVG);

// Include tool tip for the chart
viewer.setImageMap(c.getHTMLImageMap("", "",
    "title='{dataSetName} on {xLabel}: {value} MBytes/hour'"));
%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Soft Multi-Bar Chart</title>
    <!-- Include ChartDirector Javascript Library to support chart interactions -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="cdjcv.js"></script>
</head>
<body style="margin:5px 0px 0px 5px">
    <div style="font:bold 18pt verdana;">
        Soft Multi-Bar Chart
    </div>
    <hr style="border:solid 1px #000080; background:#000080" />
    <div style="font:10pt verdana; margin-bottom:1.5em">
        <a href="viewsource.jsp?file=<%=request.getServletPath()%>">View Source Code</a>
    </div>
    <!-- ****** Here is the chart image ****** -->
    <%= viewer.renderHTML(response) %>
</body>
</html>