I would like to use D3.js (or maybe Raphaël) for backend-generated reports using XSL-FO with Java. These JavaScript libraries should be used for several reasons:

1. They render more beautiful charts than what I've seen from Java libraries (IMO)
2. They support both SVG and PNG (from what I know), which is needed in XSL-FO
3. They will also be used in frontend parts of the application. Reusing them also on the backend with Java would reduce developer learning curves and codebase footprint.

So using any similar Java libraries is a less favourable option.

Now the most straight-forward way to use D3.js with Java is to use a heavy tool like selenium in order to render a dummy HTML page and execute the JavaScript in it. But that seems like overkill to me.

Is there any simpler way to execute this kind of JavaScript directly in the same Java process? I'm asking because D3.js is designed to work in the context of an HTML document. I'm not sure if that would be possible to do with Rhino or other Java scripting implementations

I would like to use D3.js (or maybe Raphaël) for backend-generated reports using XSL-FO with Java. These JavaScript libraries should be used for several reasons:

1. They render more beautiful charts than what I've seen from Java libraries (IMO)
2. They support both SVG and PNG (from what I know), which is needed in XSL-FO
3. They will also be used in frontend parts of the application. Reusing them also on the backend with Java would reduce developer learning curves and codebase footprint.

So using any similar Java libraries is a less favourable option.

Now the most straight-forward way to use D3.js with Java is to use a heavy tool like selenium in order to render a dummy HTML page and execute the JavaScript in it. But that seems like overkill to me.

Is there any simpler way to execute this kind of JavaScript directly in the same Java process? I'm asking because D3.js is designed to work in the context of an HTML document. I'm not sure if that would be possible to do with Rhino or other Java scripting implementations

• java
• javascript
• raphael
• d3.js

• Hi Lukas, did you find any good solution to render D3 based charts in server-side Java? I have now exactly the same problem, any feedback or hint would be really appretiated by me. – Gábor Lipták Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 15:36
• 1 Nope, I hadn't found any solution to this. But you can put a bounty on my question to attract more readers and possibly get an answer... – Lukas Eder Commented Feb 20, 2014 at 22:37
• Thanks for the feedback. I might be ok with phantomjs. We will see. – Gábor Lipták Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 7:39
• Did you try JavaFx webview? – Gábor Lipták Commented Feb 28, 2014 at 21:21
• @GáborLipták: Nope not yet – Lukas Eder Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 9:01

3 Answers 3

You could use phantom.js. It's a headless browser based on webkit, which allows you to run JavaScript without the need for a browser.

Using this you could just execute a system call to run phantom.js with for your JavaScript code and inputs. It would then create your output accordingly. See this example.

I worked on that about a year ago. I managed to have parts of HighCharts (SVG graphing in javascript) working with Rhino. I had to plugged env.js into it and ran into a lot of problems regarding canvas Element, especially around Bounding Boxes putations. Objects in Rhino doesn't implement getBBox(), which can't easily be faked.

My goal was to finally render it in PDF with Batik... It took too much time, and we decided to switch to another technology.

So, today, we're using wkhtmltopdf, which is not Java, but which is a static executable that can be embedded in a jar and launched easily from java side. By the way, xvfb is mandatory on Linux if you want to render something. That's pretty the same thing as PhantomJS

You might want to have a look at these d3 wrappers:

• javafx-d3

https://github./stefaneidelloth/javafx-d3

• gwt-d3:

https://github./gwtd3/gwt-d3

• "Freecode Charts and D3 Wrapper":

https://vaadin./directory#!addon/freecode-charts-and-d3-wrapper