Using sparrow to create charts?

Biggerplay

I was wondering if Sparrow would be a good fit to create charts? Obviously I would need to be able to draw lines, circles, in various styles etc, what would be the best way to create that with Sparrow? and are there any extensions already that work with the latest version of Sparrow that do that?

Shilo

It's possible, but I bet you would need to use OpenGL to create your own extensions. I really suggest just to use UIKit libraries that already allow drawing of charts, bars, pies, lines, and other shapes. It would save you time. The more I build projects, the more I think "What is the quickest route?".

Good sites to find libraries would be:
https://www.cocoacontrols.com
https://www.github.com
http://www.stackoverflow.com
http://www.raywenderlich.com

From quick research, I found these:
https://github.com/Jawbone/JBChartView
https://github.com/Ceroce/CERoundProgressView
https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/xypiechart
https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/sspieprogressview
https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/magicpie
http://www.raywenderlich.com/13269/how-to-draw-graphs-with-core-plot-part-1
http://www.gilthonwe.com/2012/06/09/stacked-bar-chart-coreplot-ios/

I am sure there are many more.

Biggerplay

Hey man 🙂 Thanks for all the links. I was aware of JBChartView, I'm just wondering if I need more flexibility in what I can do with the charts, how they represent data etc, I don't want to use one solution just to find it can't quite present the data how I want it to be presented, so was thinking maybe I should roll my own solution. I was hoping there were some easy draw controls available in Sparrow 🙂

I haven't used cocoapods, I read in the past that it can be more trouble than it's worth.

Shilo

You could be right about flexibility, although most solutions are open-source and you can always find UIKit/CoreGraphics libraries specifically for drawing shapes/lines.

There are Sparrow 2.0 extensions for drawing polygons (and circles from high-count polygons). I also created a Sparrow 2.0 extension for lines, but it uses Core Graphics to create a SPTexture of the "line". So the initial loading performance wouldn't be as optimal as drawing lines directly in OpenGL. I went the CoreGraphics route for rounded edges, anti-aliasing, and simplicity.

SPTexture+Line:
http://wiki.sparrow-framework.org/users/shilo/extensions/sptexture_line

SHPolygon:
http://wiki.sparrow-framework.org/users/shilo/extensions/shpolygon2

As for CocoaPods. I had my doubts due to unfamiliarity of it, but after digging into it I think it can be far more useful for managing multiple third-party libraries. It is also fairly easy to install. I personally haven't used CocoaPods in my own projects yet. If you don't using more than a handful of libraries in a project, I don't think CocoaPods is really that important.