Charts and Graphs

Tips and techniques for producing graphical charts.

Generally we run a hledger report and select CSV output (and disable unwanted features like the Total row): Eg:

hledger bal assets liabilities --no-total -o report.csv

Then there are many ways to convert CSV to charts.

Spreadsheet

Drag the CSV file into your favourite spreadsheet app and use its charting tools.

ploterific

ploterific (stack install hvega-theme ploterific) produces simple charts, in a HTML file that uses the Vega-Lite javascript library. Charts can also be saved as SVG or PNG. An example:

hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal -O csv -N expenses -3 cur:USD \
    | sed 's/ USD//' \
    | ploterific -m Bar -f account:N -f balance:Q -c account -o a.html \
    && open a.html

ploterific example 1

Let's break down that command line:

  • -f examples/bcexample.hledger - use this example file in the hledger repo. Omit this to use your default journal.
  • bal - run a balance report
  • -O csv - show it as CSV on stdout
  • -N - disable the final Total row
  • expenses - limit to accounts whose name contains expenses
  • -3 - summarise accounts to depth 3 and above
  • cur:USD - limit to balances in USD currency. If you use the $ symbol, it would be cur:\\$.
  • sed 's/ USD//g' - process the output with sed, stripping the USD symbols to leave bare numbers for ploterific. With $ it would be sed 's/\$//g'.
  • -m Bar - use Bar as the Vega-Lite mark type
  • -f account:N - use the account column as the first feature (X axis), treating values as names
  • -f balance:Q - use the balance column as a second feature (Y axis), treating values as quantities
  • -c account - use account values to select colours
  • -o a.html - save into a temporary HTML file
  • && open a.html - and view it in your web browser, on Mac; on other systems it might be xdg-open or start

Here is the same chart but with the colour set by the balance:

hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal -O csv -N expenses -3 cur:USD \
    | sed 's/ USD//' \
    | ploterific -m Bar -f account:N -f balance:Q -c balance:Q -o a.html

ploterific example 2

gnuplot, R, other

Check out the tools at https://plaintextaccounting.org/#reports (hreports, ledger-plot, ledger-plots, ludget, r-ledger..)