2 ms·

if Google has taught us anything, it is that this is a bad idea. Sooner or later this service will shut down as it has no business model taking your app with it

by x5n1 11y ago

if Google has taught us anything, it is that this is a bad idea. Sooner or later this service will shut down as it has no business model taking your app with it. It should be available as open source to deploy if you need to do so in the future.

Pyxl101 11y ago
Oh. I assumed this was open source and you host it on your own server. Yes, not a good idea to use a free hosted product provided by a company where you're using the service anonymously over the Internet. It's funny that you mention Google. Google used to offer a web-based chart API a lot like this one. Well, it looks like they're technically still offering it as Image Charts [1] but it is deprecated. I think it used to be called just Google Charts, but that brand was repurposed to a client-side JavaScript library. I'd say it's virtually certain that they pull the plug on it at some point, given Alphabet and the whole "era of fiscal responsibility". I've actually written a clone of Google Chart API for private use. It relies on ChartDirector though which isn't free; it's basically a URL skin over that product. If this would be useful open source to anyone I could see if my company is willing to agree to release it. However I had sort of assumed that web-based charting APIs were dead by this point in favor of client-side ones. Edit: Is this a paid API? StatHat looks like something that's a paid service but I can't tell if the feature in the article is paid. [1] https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts
- x5n1 11y ago
  At the very top of the page. I thought it was already gone. "Warning: This API is deprecated. Please use the actively maintained Google Charts API instead. See our deprecation policy for details."

2 ms·

if Google has taught us anything, it is that this is a bad idea. Sooner or later this service will shut down as it has no business model taking your app with it

by x5n1 11y ago

Pyxl101 11y ago
Oh. I assumed this was open source and you host it on your own server. Yes, not a good idea to use a free hosted product provided by a company where you're using the service anonymously over the Internet. It's funny that you mention Google. Google used to offer a web-based chart API a lot like this one. Well, it looks like they're technically still offering it as Image Charts [1] but it is deprecated. I think it used to be called just Google Charts, but that brand was repurposed to a client-side JavaScript library. I'd say it's virtually certain that they pull the plug on it at some point, given Alphabet and the whole "era of fiscal responsibility". I've actually written a clone of Google Chart API for private use. It relies on ChartDirector though which isn't free; it's basically a URL skin over that product. If this would be useful open source to anyone I could see if my company is willing to agree to release it. However I had sort of assumed that web-based charting APIs were dead by this point in favor of client-side ones. Edit: Is this a paid API? StatHat looks like something that's a paid service but I can't tell if the feature in the article is paid. [1] https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts
- x5n1 11y ago
  At the very top of the page. I thought it was already gone. "Warning: This API is deprecated. Please use the actively maintained Google Charts API instead. See our deprecation policy for details."