Angular (>=8.0) declarative Highcharts components

Declarative and reactive wrapper for Highcharts. Warning: fairly experimental and lacking some features still. Plan is to make it stable though.

Demo: https://antonsimola.github.io/angular-highcharts-declarative/

Install

1. Highcharts if you don't have already: npm i highcharts
2. npm i angular-highcharts-declarative

Usage

1. Import HcChartModule in your AppModule
2. Use <hc-chart> and the nested chart configuration like so:

@Component({
  selector: 'app',
  template: `
    <hc-chart>
      <hc-title text="{{ title | uppercase }}"></hc-title>
      <hc-series [name]="seriesName" type="line" [data]="data"> </hc-series>
    </hc-chart>
  `
})
export class AppComponent {
  title = 'Simple chart';
  seriesName = 'Series 1';
  data = [1, 2, 3];
}

Components

All components are OnPush, so you must assign new reference to trigger change detection.

eg. data.push(1); won't work, use data = [...data, 1];

<hc-chart> <!--Inputs ChartOptions-->
    <hc-title>Title</<hc-title> <!-- inputs TitleOptions. Use either [text] or specify inside the tag. InnerHTML is init only!-->
    <hc-subtitle>Subtitle</<hc-subtitle> <!--inputs SubtitleOptions, similar to hc-title-->
    <hc-legend></<hc-legend> <!--inputs LegendOptions-->
    <hc-tooltip></<hc-tooltip> <!--inputs TooltipOptions. It can be also specified inside a series component-->
    <hc-x-axis></<hc-x-axis> <!--Can omit if simple chart, inputs XAxisOptions-->
    <hc-y-axis></<hc-y-axis> <!--Can omit if simple chart, inputs YAxisOptions-->
    <hc-series> <!--inputs SeriesOptions + "extra"-->
        <hc-point></<hc-point> <!--optional if you want to listen to point events-->
    </<hc-series>
    
    <hc-bar></hc-bar> <!--inputs SeriesBarOptions-->
    <hc-line></hc-line> <!--inputs SeriesLineOptions-->
    <hc-pie></hc-pie> <!--etc-->
</hc-chart>

Directives

As an alternative of providing axis index to series, you can also use hcXAxis / hcYAxis directive to match axis with series:

<hc-x-axis #myAxis></<hc-x-axis>
<hc-series [hcXAxis]="myAxis"></<hc-series>

Material styles

There's also optional Material design styles if you want to use the charts with Angular Material.

• Primary color is used as the first series color
• Fonts
• Tooltip
• Background color = Material theme card color

1. Follow https://material.angular.io/guide/theming on how to add custom theme for your app if you haven't done already
2. In your styles.scss, where you normally define your Material theme, add:

$app-theme: mat-light-theme($app-primary, $app-accent, $app-warn); // this is your theme
$material-theme-for-highcharts: $app-theme; // !!! you must provide variable called $material-theme-for-highcharts that is your theme
@import '~angular-highcharts-declarative/styles/material-highcharts'; // !!! import the material-highcharts theme
@include angular-material-theme($app-theme); //load your theme with the mixin normally

• Material theme works in Highcharts styled mode. Thus you would probably prefer if all charts are in styled mode by default:

//app.module.ts
import {HC_CHART_DEFAULTS} from 'angular-highcharts-declarative';

@NgModule({
    providers: [
        {provide : HC_CHART_DEFAULTS, useValue: {styledMode:true}}
   ]
})

(see showcase code for full example)

Tips

• Load extra modules by providing HC_MODULES (see showcase app.module)
• using "boost" module is recommended from Highcharts with big datasets (showcase uses it)
• Get reference to underlying chart object and do advanced stuff (interop with declarative style is not tested!):

@Component({
  selector: 'app',
  template: `
    <hc-chart (chartReady)="chartReady($event)"
    </hc-chart>
  `
})
export class AppComponent {
  chartReady(chart: Chart) {
    //do stuff with chart
  }
}

Why

There are multiple Angular Highcharts libraries out there (see inspirations). This one moves configuration into the template and takes reactivity further than the other alternatives.

Declarative syntax makes it easier to create simple, reactive charts. For complex charts, you can still access the full chart object object with (chartReady) or chart$ observable.

Pros compared to configuration based libraries:

• In general more Angular-y feel
• Easy to make reactive
• Easy to update after initialization: just assign input variable again
• Configuration merge logic (chart.update) is done by library
• Use pipes for displaying titles etc.
• Async data with async pipe
• Good performance because it runs updates and events outside NgZone by default
• Event registration is done outside zone and event's are only propagated for the ones that are listened by user, thus reducing change detection.

Shortcomings as of now:

• Needs performance optimizations when multiple updates happening at the same time
• Does not have all possible chart configurations as inputs (not right now at least). However you can pass special series configurations as extra input

<hc-series type="line" [extra]="{dashStyle:'ShortDash'}"></hc-series>

• See also Todo

Todo

Note: even though drilldown, zaxis, data etc. are not implemented, you can use them with chart [extra] input or by calling methods on the underlying chart object directly.

• Events for:
  • Chart
  • Series
  • Point
  • Axes
• Legend
• Tooltip
• Highmaps
• Highstock
• Tooltip formatter as template? Would be cool but is it possible?
• Zaxis
• Drilldown
• Data
• Colors
• Better docs
• Performance when multiple updates happening at the same time? throttle?
• Injection token for base settings for easy extension HC_CHART_DEFAULTS
• Different component per series type? eg. hc-line, hc-bar (done: basic types)
• Plot options (maybe not doing in the near future, I dont find plot options that useful most of the time since same stuff can be done with series)
• Tests
• [extra] input for other components than series
• Material design theme
• Series [dataStream] attribute for real time charts (see simple realtime demo)
• Alternatively configure title or subtitle simply with innerhtml: <hc-title>My title</hc-title
• Expose underlying chart reference
• Update methods per component
• Link axis <-> series with template reference

Inspirations

• https://github.com/cebor/angular-highcharts
• https://github.com/kiwigrid/angular2-highcharts
• https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts-angular
• https://github.com/recharts/recharts

Licence

This wrapper is MIT. You must also comply to Highcharts license!