C3.js vs JFreeChart: What are the differences?
What is C3.js? A D3-based reusable chart library. c3 is a D3-based reusable chart library that enables deeper integration of charts into web applications.
What is JFreeChart? A free Java chart library. It is a free Java chart library that makes it easy for developers to display professional quality charts in their applications. It has a consistent and well-documented API, supporting a wide range of chart types.
C3.js and JFreeChart can be categorized as "Charting Libraries" tools.
Some of the features offered by C3.js are:
- Comfortable - C3 makes it easy to generate D3-based charts by wrapping the code required to construct the entire chart. We don't need to write D3 code any more.
- Customizable - C3 gives some classes to each element when generating, so you can define a custom style by the class and it's possible to extend the structure directly by D3.
- Controllable - C3 provides a variety of APIs and callbacks to access the state of the chart. By using them, you can update the chart even if after it's rendered.
On the other hand, JFreeChart provides the following key features:
- Flexible design that is easy to extend, and targets both server-side and client-side applications
- Support for many output types, including Swing and JavaFX components, image files (including PNG and JPEG), and vector graphics file formats (including PDF, EPS and SVG)
- open source or, more specifically, free software
C3.js and JFreeChart are both open source tools. C3.js with 8.47K GitHub stars and 1.41K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than JFreeChart with 446 GitHub stars and 193 GitHub forks.