Custom Graphs

Custom graphs work just like the custom reports. The difference is that instead of generating HTML, you just put the word ``GRAPH'' (without the speechmarks) in the HTML box to indicate you want ASM to draw a graph instead. All the SQL keys, including $ASK and $VAR are still supported in the normal way.

ASM will dissect the results of the query in the following way to generate a graph:

1. Each row in your result data becomes a point on the X axis
2. The first column in each row is assumed to contain the name used for the label on the X axis. Only string data should be used for the first column.
3. Each subsequent column is assumed to be a piece of data at that point on the X axis (and thus gives the Y axis its scale). Only numeric data can appear in columns after the first one.
4. The fieldname of each column after the label column is used to denote the data on the legend.

For example, this SQL will produce a graph that shows the amount of donations from animal movements each year. Following our scheme, the Year column being first is the X axis label, TotalAmount is the first datapoint for that item on the X axis.

SELECT 

YEAR(DateReceived) AS Year, 

SUM(ownerdonation.Donation) AS TotalAmount 

FROM ownerdonation

WHERE MovementID > 0

GROUP BY YEAR(DateReceived) 

ORDER BY Year

Would produce data that might look something like:

Year	TotalAmount 2004

And in turn, a graph that looks like:

Note that the graphs use a relative scale, interpreted from the data. If all of your column data is the same value, then the graph will not display because it has no variance.