How to Create MVC-Oriented Charts?

The demand for feature-rich, professional and eye-catching websites give birth to new programming languages and frameworks. A good number of individuals tend to learn different programming languages. It enables them to get more web-development and design projects and increase their earnings.

We all know that PHP is one of the most prominent programming languages. It is used extensively by the majority of programmers all over the world to create awesome websites, CMS, and other web applications. There are many individuals that have a low learning curve. So, they face lots of problems while learning the PHP and its different frameworks.

Most of them resort to CakePHP. So, what exactly is it? How can you use it to create MVC-oriented Charts? Let’s study and find out. In simple words, CakePHP is a framework for developing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) applications with the PHP programming language. MVC and ORM are the two most used design patterns of CakePHP Cookbook. By using this framework, web developers can create awesome websites easily on a low cost.

They have to write less code while using this framework. See some other benefits detailed here below:

• Open source,
• MVC Framework,
• template engine,
• Caching operations,
• Search Engine Friendly URLs,
• Easy CRUD interaction with the database,
• Libraries and Assistants,
• Built-in Validation,
• Localization,
• Easy Availability of Email, Cookie, Security, Session, and Request Processing Components
• Supports AJAX, JavaScript, HTML, etc.

See How CakePHP Loop Request works:

CakePHP Folder structure:

Folder name	Brief Description
Bin	It contains the cake console executable files
Config	It holds a few Cake PHP configuration files, such as connection information database, self-tuning, kernel configuration files, etc.
Logs	It contains log files as per your configuration.
Plugins	It holds CakePHP Plugins.
src	Here, application files are stored.
Tests	This is the place where you can test your application.
temp	Here, Cake PHP stores data.
Vendor	You install Cake PHP and other application dependencies here. Please don’t edit files in this folder without having any problem. It is because things may go out of your control.
Webroot	It is the public root document of your application. This section contains all the files that you want to be viewed by the public.

How to Create MVC-Oriented Charts using Cakephp?

(MVC: Model, View, Controller- Visual Diagram)
Arrange Components that are needed to create MVC-oriented Charts

(A) FusionCharts

There are many online resources from where you can download the latest version of FusionCharts. Apart from this, you can install it with the use of npm or bower package managers. For this, you need to use the below-mentioned commands:

For npm:
npm install fusioncharts
npm install fusionmaps
For bower:
bower install fusioncharts
bower install fusionmaps

(B) CakePHP Framework

Just install CakePHP using the following composer command
php composer.phar create-project –prefer-dist CakePHP/app my_app_name or
composer self-update && composer create-project –prefer-dist CakePHP/app my_app_name

© XAMPP Server

Install the XAMPP server to create MVC-oriented charts. You can use other servers also that support PHP and its frameworks. XAMPP Server is available for all major platforms like Windows, OS X, and Linux.

1. Establish the Virtual Host

First, you need to define a virtual host for your application. For this, you need to add the below-mentioned code httpd-vhost.conf file-

DocumentRoot /path/to/CakePHP framework
ServerName CakePHP-tutorial.localhost
SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV “development”

After making changes in your config file, save it and restart the server. Now, it’s time to commence your CakePHP skeleton with the use of the URL (http://cakephpxyz.locastlost) please verify whether you are in the right direction or not. It demands a deep understanding of coding practices. If you don’t know that, Cake PHP Development Services may come to your rescue.

2. Link the my_app with The Database You Have

After the successful installation of the server, you see that CakePHP app not attached to the database. For that, you need to make changes in my_app\config\app.php file to create a connection with the MySQL database.
Datasources’ => [
‘default’ => [
‘className’ => ‘Cake\Database\Connection’,
‘driver’ => ‘Cake\Database\Driver\Mysql’,
‘persistent’ => false,
‘host’ => ‘localhost’,
/**
* CakePHP will use the default DB port based on the driver selected
* MySQL on MAMP uses port 8889, MAMP users will want to uncomment
* the following line and set the port accordingly
*/
//’port’ => ‘non_standard_port_number’,
‘username’ => ‘db_user_name’,
‘password’ => ‘db_user_password’,
‘database’ => ‘db_name’,
‘encoding’ => ‘utf8’,
‘timezone’ => ‘UTC’,
‘flags’ => [],
‘cacheMetadata’ => true,
‘log’ => false,

3. Insert FunsionCharts

• For this, you need to Download the FusionCharts PHP wrapper. Explore the usioncharts.php file and let that file remain in the folder.

• Now, it’s time to extract the JS file from previously downloaded FusionCharts Suite XT file. Just let that file stay in the folder in my_app/webroot/js/fusioncharts

• Now, open my_app/src/Template/Layout/default.ctp file and attach the JS file as displayed below:

4. Create FusionchartController as shown here below:

Src/Controller/FusionchartsController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use App\Controller\AppController;

class FusionchartsController extends AppController
{
public function index()
{

}
}

5. Create MVC-oriented Charts Now

You can create a directory in src/Template/Fusioncharts. For that create Fusionchart/index.ctp. It has the code which is needed for the creation of MVC-oriented Charts:

//creating the array contains chart attribute
$arrData = array(
“chart” => array(
“animation”=>”0”,
“caption”=> “Albertsons SuperMart”,
“subCaption”=> “No. Of Visitors Last Week”,
“xAxisName”=> “Day”,
“yAxisName”=> “No. Of Visitors”,
“showValues”=> “0”,
“paletteColors”=> “#81BB76”,
“showHoverEffect”=> “1”,
“use3DLighting”=> “0”,
“showaxislines”=> “1”,
“baseFontSize”=> “13”,
“theme”=> “fint”
)
);
foreach($query as $row) {
$value = $row[“value1”];
array_push($data, array(
“label” => $row[“category”],
“value” => $row[“value1”]
)
);
}

$arrData[“data”]=$data;

//encoding the dataset object in json format
$jsonEncodedData = json_encode($arrData);

// chart object
$columnChart = new FusionCharts(“column2d”, “chart-1”, “100%”, “300”, “chart-container”, “json”, $jsonEncodedData);

// Render the chart
$columnChart->render();
?>
// Container to render the chart

This is all that you need to create MCV-oriented charts. If you face any technical problems and not able to solve it, better contact any CakePHP Development Company for the solution of the problem. Don’t make experiments with codes as it can spoil all your efforts within a few seconds.
You get the final outcome like this:

Final Remarks

CakePHP Cookbook is being used by a large number of coders for the creation of websites or web applications in an easy way. By following the above-mentioned methods, you can easily create MVC-oriented charts using CakePHP. Don’t hesitate to hire CakePHP Developers if you face problems while creating the chart, website or web applications.