How to create Pie Charts Online

When it comes to creating pie charts, using Microsoft Excel is the easiest way to get the job done.

But what if we do not have access to Excel? How else is it possible to create pie charts?

A simple and cheap way would be to draw it and scan it as an image. The pie chart might look just like this.

Not very impressive huh? There must be a better way to create nice looking Pie Charts without using Excel. See the following Pie Chart.

A neat little pie chart representing percentages of people playing the various types of sports at my school. Believe it or not, this pie chart is created online via Google Chart API. To create a chart like this, simply copy and paste the following url into your browser.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:30,40,20,10&chs=550x200&chco=8A2EB8,BDD350,2E5CB8,CC3333&chl=Water Polo (30%)|Rugby (40%)|Hockey (20%)|Soccer (10%)

Or just click this link

I’ll explain a little bit about how you can go about creating this Pie chart with Google Chart API. If you look at the url, there are variables which you can change to create the chart online.

cht=p3 -> cht is equivalent to Chart Type while p3 stands for three dimensional pie chart. But how am I going to know which chart type to use. Just refer to Google Chart API’s Chart Types. The various charts which can be created are:

Sparkline
Line chart
Bar chart
Pie chart
Venn diagram
Scatter plot
Radar chart
Map
Google-o-meter

So the good news is that Google Chart API allows us to create many different types of charts. Not just Pie Charts.

chd=t:30,40,20,10 -> chd is equivalent to Chart Data while 30,40,20,10 are the data itself. Refer to the pie chart above and you can see that Water Polo is 30, Rugby is 40 and so on.

chs=550×200 – chs is equivalent to Chart Size while 550×200 are the width and height.

chco=8A2EB8,BDD350,2E5CB8,CC3333 – chco is equivalent to Chart Colors while 8A2EB8,BDD350,2E5CB8,CC3333 are the respective color codes. I got to admit, I had lots of fun matching the right colors into the Pie Chart. If you are unsure of where to get great color codes for your PIE Charts, check out the following color combo libraries.

For more information on how to create charts with Google Chart API, check out the Developer’s Guide.

Hopefully these information are good enough for you to create your very own online Pie Chart. Don’t forget to also try creating other chart types and if possible showcase it by placing the url on the comments below.

Happy Google Charting!

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