Flask, JSON and the Google Charts API

This tutorial will teach you how to build a Flask app that combined with JSON and the Google Charts API. If you have no experience with Flask before I recommend reading my previous tutorials, they are great fun!

Related course
Python Flask: Make Web Apps with Python

$ pip install Flask

Create a file called hello.py

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def hello():
return "Hello World!"

if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run()

Finally run the web app using this command:

$ python hello.py
* Running on http://localhost:5000/

Open http://localhost:5000/ in your webbrowser, and “Hello World!” should appear.

Download Flask Examples

Get JSON data

To display awesome charts we first need some data. There are two common ways to get data in web apps: data from servers using an API (usually JSON) and data from databases. I use the Fixer.io JSON API to get some financial data, but any JSON API should do. If you are unfamiliar with JSON, see this article.

We wrote this script to get the exchange rates:

import json
import urllib2

def getExchangeRates():
rates = []
response = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.fixer.io/latest')
data = response.read()
rdata = json.loads(data, parse_float=float)

rates.append( rdata['rates']['USD'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['GBP'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['JPY'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['AUD'] )
return rates

rates = getExchangeRates()
print rates

Google Charts API with Flask

With the Google Charts API you can display live data on your site. There are a lot of great charts there that are easy to add to your Flask app. We simply give the data that we got from the server through JSON and parsed, to the Google Charts API.

Create a flask app with the directory /templates/ for your templates. This is the main Flask code:

from flask import Flask, flash, redirect, render_template, request, session, abort
import os
import json
import urllib2

tmpl_dir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), 'templates')
app = Flask(__name__, template_folder=tmpl_dir)

def getExchangeRates():
rates = []
response = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.fixer.io/latest')
data = response.read()
rdata = json.loads(data, parse_float=float)

rates.append( rdata['rates']['USD'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['GBP'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['HKD'] )
rates.append( rdata['rates']['AUD'] )
return rates

@app.route("/")
def index():
rates = getExchangeRates()
return render_template('test.html',**locals())

@app.route("/hello")
def hello():
return "Hello World!"

if __name__ == "__main__":
app.run()

And we have this template:

{% block body %}

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<div id="chart_div" style="width: 900px; height: 300px;">
<div>

<script type="text/javascript">//<![CDATA[ 

google.load('visualization', '1', {packages: ['corechart', 'bar']});<br />
google.setOnLoadCallback(drawBasic);</p>
<p>function drawBasic() {</p>
<p>      var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([<br />
        ['Currency', 'Rate', { role: 'style' }],<br />
        ['USD', { {rates[0]}}, 'gold'],<br />
        ['GBP', { {rates[1]}}, 'silver'],<br />
        ['HKD', { {rates[2]}}, 'brown'],<br />
        ['AUD', { {rates[3]}}, 'blue']<br />
      ]);</p>
<p>      var options = {<br />
        title: 'Exchange rate overview',<br />
        chartArea: {width: '50%'},<br />
        hAxis: {<br />
          title: '',<br />
          minValue: 0<br />
        },<br />
        vAxis: {<br />
          title: ''<br />
        }<br />
      };</p>
<p>      var chart = new google.visualization.BarChart(document.getElementById('chart_div'));</p>
<p>      chart.draw(data, options);<br />
    }<br />
//]]>  </p>
<p></script>

&#123;% endblock %&#125;

Result:

<caption id=”attachment_770” align=”alignnone” width=”855”] Flask App