Y-Axis label, possible?

[japanconman]

Ever think of adding Y-Axis label?

[Boris-Em]

Hi @japanconman,
This is a feature that I would like to see implemented as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I'm pretty busy right now and won't have time to work on it in the near future.
Would you be interested on working on this feature?

[japanconman]

@Boris-Em : yeah, i would like to help. Just not sure I'm up to your coding standard :D. Kinda new to GitHub, how can I commit changes to the "feature" branch?

[Boris-Em]

@japanconman,
Great news!
You won't be able to commit changes directly to the project. What you can do though, is fork the feature branch of the project, work on the new feature and then open a pull request on the same branch, which I will be able to review and merge to the project (with a new commit).

I think that the best way to design this new feature, would be to make it as close as possible from the way the X-Axis Labels work. Keep in mind that it should stay optional.

Let me know if you want to talk about it more, or if you need help with anything!

Thanks a lot for the help!

[japanconman]

Hi @Boris-Em , there are few things I would like to add in as well

. See what's your opinion.

1. Multi-line text support for X-Axis label.

   I've added it in, but I didn't touch too much on the constant that you are using i.e. "padding", "labelXaxisOffset.
   

2. Y-Axis label with aware of autoScaleYAxis

   I'm thinking when autoScaleYAxis=YES, it's cleaner to just show the min, median and max value, whereas absolute range is used for autoScaleYAxis=NO

3. Overlapping label removal

The intent is to remove overlapping labels on both axis when there are just too many values. However, this contradicts with numberOfGapsBetweenLabelsOnLineGraph method. What you think?

4. Subtle reference line for axis value across graph

   See the red arrows. The reference line will appear according to the axis label. Looking at the code structure, I'm not sure where's the best place to put this in. (Need some help on CG drawing also)
   

[Boris-Em]

Hi @japanconman,
Sorry for the late reply. I'll take a look at the pull request you submitted this week end. From what I saw so far, it looks amazing!

• 1 & 2: Great
• 3: What do you have in mind exactly? A BOOL property like displayOverlappingLabels (defaults to YES) that hides the overlapping labels if set to NO?
  If so, we could make this feature work only if numberOfGapsBetweenLabelsOnLineGraph returns 0 (when all the labels are displayed). I'm also thinking about making this method optional. If it's not implemented, all the labels would be displayed, just like if it would return 0.
• 4: This is a good idea, we have to think about how to implement it though. I feel like it should be drawn on a different UIView, it should give us more flexibility.

Thank you so much for all the hard work! This is truly great!

[japanconman]

@Boris-Em , sounds good.

On pt 4, I'm wondering what if we implement it right in the BEMLine class. Since all the data point references and CG drawing are done within that class.

[jasonmcdermott]

+1 for pt3, that would be super useful
+1 for pt 4, though again it's good for this to be optional on both X and Y axes.

This lib is kicking some serious ass! Two months ago I was disappointed by the lack of featured, beautiful graphing libs available on iOS. I was even considering using webKit + JS! Not anymore, BEMSimpleLineGraph has it all covered, with more features on the way. Awesome.

[Boris-Em]

@japanconman
Thanks a lot for your PR. It looks great!

• Pt3: numberOfGapsBetweenLabelsOnLineGraph is now optional with the latest commit I pushed. All of the labels are displayed if the method is not implemented. From what I can tell, it looks like the overlap feature works pretty well. I think that I will add a property to make it optional though. Good job!
• Pt4: I don't see anything wrong with drawing them directly in BEMLine.

@jasonmcdermott
Thanks for all your help with the library. Your inputs are spot on!

[Sam-Spencer]

@japanconman @Boris-Em @jasonmcdermott The requested feature, (point four) is now implemented on the feature branch. See commit 2b16d64.

I should note however that there is still work to do on this feature. As of now it only supports x-axis / vertical reference lines and an x-axis label frame. I have not yet added support for the y-axis or multiline x-axis label (these features seem to be incomplete and little bit wonky).

Additionally, in lieu of the git-spirit I would suggest making a separate issue for each of those points. Then, as we work on them we can "cross them off" and manage them individually.

[japanconman]

@Sam-Spencer, it just happened that I tried put in the Y reference line yesterday too. Based on the committed codes, our codes are very similar. :) (just by l

[japanconman]

(Fat fingers typing on the phone...)

...(just by looking at codes only, haven't test on Xcode)

For Y reference drawing what I did was separate out the drawLine method from drawDots. And call the drawLine after drawYAxis. Other than that, it's pretty close.

I notice that drawDots have to be called before drawYAxis, so there are available yAxisValue for drawYAxis to create the labels.

I guess that should be the key. Will input more when I got chance to sit in front of Xcode these few days.

Cheers.