How To Create A JavaScript Gantt Chart

Data visualization uses graphic elements, such as charts and graphs, to convey compelling stories. Furthermore, if your website contains a lot of data, you’ll need to find out how to make that info easy to interpret. Charts may help non-English speakers understand even the most complex data linkages by making them clear and intuitive. As a result, programmers and developers must understand how to create several different charts. A JavaScript Gantt chart shows dependency relations between activities and schedules. This makes it a precious tool in the software world today. Everyone understands basic charts fairly easily. However, technical jargon-filled texts are not as easily comprehended. Charts will make your website easier to understand and more visually appealing when utilized appropriately. Naturally, this tutorial will look at JavaScript Gantt charts and how to make them. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What Is A Gantt Chart?

There are numerous charts available – including flow charts, pie charts, and Gantt charts – all having their benefits. JavaScript Gantt charts provide project management and planning by displaying tasks on the y-axis and time scales on the x-axis. The lengths of the task bars define the new task duration between the start and end dates. Tooltips display the exact time elapsed and support HTML and CSS formatting. Gantt chart data may simply be loaded from JSON or your database, and numerous high-performance open-source samples are available.

What Are The Features Of A Gantt Chart?

JavaScript Gantt charts come with a variety of benefits. Gantt charts allow you to display both time and date. Moreover, using data with multiple and irregular divisions of dates on a timeline, you can customize the labels. In addition, you can also customize the cosmetic properties of each category. Furthermore, you can customize the input and output data formats with Gantt charts. This allows you to provide dates in a JSON file in some format and customize the output format in another. Moreover, you can also display the completion of each task in percentages, which you can define with the slackFillColor attribute.

Data Table

Gantt charts also allow you to show a data table at the side of the chart, which can be highly customized to your liking. Additionally, you can restrict the Gantt view pane area to specific data and time duration. You can also link a task to a process by specifying an ID. Hence, you can define multiple tasks for each process. This can prove beneficial in cases where the Gantt chart indicates allotted work for all team members. With a Gantt chart, it becomes easy to visualize the multiple jobs allocated to each member. Moreover, you can hide/show task labels, individual taskbar dates, task labels, and even show individual taskbars as groups. Additionally, you can even customize connectors to connect any two tasks on the Gantt chart. The connectors can be rendered in four different ways and connected to either start, end, or both.

Milestones

Furthermore, you can display milestones as polygons or stars with customizable properties at specified dates. You can also display additional tool text for milestones. Moreover, trend lines or zones can be added to Gantt charts to highlight a particular date or a range of dates. You can, for example, add a trend line to represent “Today,” or one to illustrate “Holiday,” and so on. In addition, you can even customize tooltip properties to show task dates or as part of a tooltip. You can even add additional macros to create dynamic tooltips.

Legends

Finally, Gantt charts allow you to add a legend to the chart to display color keys and fully customize legend cosmetics. Furthermore, you can customize the chart’s colors using pre-defined palettes and single color theme selectors. You can specify the width ratio for distributing the data table and Gantt area. Gantt charts also allow you to display round-edged task bars and customize the gradient mix and shadow effect for taskbars. You can easily add annotations to the Gantt chart to display additional information. You can also enable hovering and customize hovering properties for categories, processes, connectors, and taskbars.

How Can You Create A Simple Gantt Chart In JavaScript?

Here is what you’ll need to create a Gantt chart:

First, define the data you want to use.
Second, specify the visual timeline for the JavaScript Gantt chart.
Next, define the processes.
Finally, define the tasks.

FusionCharts Suite XT is the most comprehensive JavaScript charting solution available. It’s all about making the data visualization process easier with charts. FusionCharts components can be installed via CDN, local files, or NPM. If you choose to install the FusionCharts package via npm, ensure your system has Node.js installed. Moreover, ensure you have a bundler installed, such as webpack, parcel, or browserify. However, it is important to note that FusionCharts accepts data in JSON format. Now let’s see how we can use JavaScript and FusionCharts to create Gantt charts.

FusionCharts.ready(function() {
  var socialMediaPlan = new FusionCharts({
    type: 'gantt',
    renderAt: 'chart-container',
    width: '750',
    height: '500',
    dataFormat: 'json',
    dataSource: {
      "chart": {
        "dateformat": "mm/dd/yyyy",
        "caption": "Social Media Optimization",
        "subcaption": "Typical Steps Involved",
        "theme": "fusion",
        "canvasBorderAlpha": "40"
      },
      "categories": [{
        "category": [{
            "start": "08/01/2014",
            "end": "08/31/2014",
            "label": "Aug '14"
          },
          {
            "start": "09/01/2014",
            "end": "09/30/2014",
            "label": "Sep '14"
          }
        ]
      }],
      "processes": {
        "fontsize": "12",
        "isbold": "1",
        "align": "right",
        "process": [{
            "label": "Identify Customers"
          },
          {
            "label": "Survey 500 Customers"
          },
          {
            "label": "Interpret Requirements"
          },
          {
            "label": "Market Analysis"
          },
          {
            "label": "Brainstorm concepts"
          }
        ]
      },
      "tasks": {
        "task": [{
            "start": "08/04/2014",
            "end": "08/10/2014"
          },
          {
            "start": "08/08/2014",
            "end": "08/19/2014"
          },
          {
            "start": "08/19/2014",
            "end": "09/02/2014"
          },
          {
            "start": "08/24/2014",
            "end": "09/02/2014"
          },
          {
            "start": "09/02/2014",
            "end": "09/21/2014"
          }
        ]
      }

    }
  }).render();
});

You can run a more extensive version of this code on fiddle.

Why Should You Choose FusionCharts To Make Gantt Charts In JavaScript?

FusionCharts makes it simple to create JavaScript graphs. Undoubtedly, it is a complete JavaScript framework for interactive and responsive charts. FusionCharts requires only a few lines of code to integrate into your online application. The FusionCharts platform provides several graph examples, including source code, and is regularly updated and bug-free. For example, click here to learn how to make pie charts in PHP, MySQL, and React. Individual assistance is also available to help you quickly resolve technical issues and information about various charts and dashboards to help you understand all the capabilities. FusionCharts also includes several graphs to help you visualize your data effectively. Now you know what makes FusionCharts the best JavaScript framework. So, click here and start creating Gantt charts in JS and much more!

Emad Bin Abid

I'm a software engineer who has a bright vision and a strong interest in designing and engineering software solutions. I readily understand that in today's agile world the development process has to be rapid, reusable, and scalable; hence it is extremely important to develop solutions that are well-designed and embody a well-thought-of architecture as the baseline. Apart from designing and developing business solutions, I'm a content writer who loves to document technical learnings and experiences so that peers in the same industry can also benefit from them.