Most of the time it will be really easy to install pChart on your web server, sometimes it will be impossible.. This documentation explains how to make it works with PHP 4⁺ and an apache daemon (benchmarks are showing that pChart runs faster with PHP5). To install pChart, extract the contents of the latest pChart archive you‘ve downloaded on your web server folder.

You‘ll find in the class folders the core of the pChart library composed of :


Those files will be called from your PHP scripts so they must be located under the root of your web site.


All the ttf files must be accessible from your web scripts, you may need to update the path of the default font using the setFontProperties function :

 $myPicture->setFontProperties(array("FontName"=>"/home/var/fonts/myfont.ttf");

Basically, the simplest configuration is to keep this kind of directory structure putting all the pChart classes in class folder, the fonts in the fonts folder and the external ressources (like pictures you want to includes or data sources) in the resources folder. You can leave your pChart scripts in the Library folder. Keeping a simple folder structure will help you to debug and maintain your applications!

To run on your web server, you need to ensure that apache has been configured with the GD library. This free library is most of the time integrated in the PHP installation you‘ve already made, only thing to do is to activate it from the php.ini file.

If GD support is not enabled in your PHP installation, you may see the following error message :

PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function imagecreatetruecolor()

On windows, uncomment the following line :

;extension=php_gd2.dll

On linux environment, you‘ll need to recompile PHP with the GD library. (usually with the --enable-gd command line switch)


To see the configuration of PHP on your web server, make a file named test.php in the web directory root and write the following in it :

<?php   
 phpinfo();
?>

The presence of the GD library is tested in the pImage class by the following lines :

 if (!extension_loaded(‘gd‘) && !extension_loaded(‘gd2‘))
 {
   /* Extension not loaded */
 }

If you‘re using an hosted environment that you are not managing, you may face a serious issue here. Depending of the quality of services offered by your web provider, GD support may be enabled or not. As the GD library can add an additional load on the backends (creating pictures can be CPU consuming), some providers will not allow it to be installed.