Assistance Needed: Generating Chart and Data from Config

[nngu0048]

Hi Developers,

I’m currently working on a project called Text-to-Chart, which focuses on generating charts from given prompts.

I have a chart configuration that was generated automatically (a chart config may not exist in the database or be logically correct), and I need to:

• Generate the corresponding chart (in PNG or SVG format).
• Retrieve the displayed data (data used in the chart)

I’m unsure how to proceed and would greatly appreciate guidance on the best way to achieve this.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
Hy

[larsyencken]

Hello Hy,

We unfortunately don't have third-party use of Grapher as a well-supported use case, so whilst you're welcome to experiment, the team doesn't have the resources to help you out with your exploration.

If you are coding in Python, you may be able to try an old experiment of ours owid-grapher-py. Even that experiment is really designed to get charts displaying it working in Jupyter notebooks rather than rendering them to PNG/SVG, so it could still be a fair bit of work for you.

Good luck!

[nngu0048]

Thanks for your reply and suggestions!

[nngu0048]

Hi @larsyencken,

I found a workaround for generating a chart image for a given config.

• First, I use API "http://localhost:3030/admin/api/charts" to insert a chart into the database.
• Second, I download the chart image (PNG) via "http://localhost:3030/grapher/" using Google Chrome

However, when I download the displayed data using the API "http://localhost:3030/grapher/.csv" or by clicking the download button on the web browser.
It raised an error. Like ({"error":{"message":"Error: No such chart\n at ....../owid-grapher/adminSiteServer/mockSiteRouter.ts:2:8351\n at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)","status":404}}

Could you tell me which steps I need to complete to download the data from the local server?

Thank you very much!
Hy

[nngu0048]

Hi @larsyencken,

Could you help me with the follow-up question in this thread?
#4477 (reply in thread)

If there are APIs to download displayed data for a newly created chart in the local server (localhost:3030), please let me know!

Thank you very much!
Hy

[marcelgerber]

Hi! Sorry for the late reply.

Some areas in our code are making assumptions about some server-side code to be running alongside it, which is not the case in your setup. Sorry about that, it's just like Lars said above, Grapher is not always necessarily built for re-use.

But don't despair, it's not too hard to make your usecase work!
If you're comfortable making a one-line change to the code, then you can change the following line: https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher/blob/e6bd9b473ac374da8fa85c06e540b752c37dac8e/packages/%40ourworldindata/grapher/src/modal/DownloadModal.tsx#L760C11-L761

to const serverSideDownloadAvailable = false instead.

The other alternative is to use the Download modal in the admin (http://localhost:3030/admin/charts/:chartId/edit) - that one is not relying on any other server-side helpers for the data download.

Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any further questions!

[nngu0048]

Hi @marcelgerber,

Both of your suggested solutions worked for my case.
Thank you so much for your great support.

Hy