JavaScript ChartsAxis Intervals

The Axis Interval determines which axis labels, grid lines and ticks are shown along the axis.

Category axes show these items for every category. Number and time axes will display around 5 items depending on the available space.

Customisation

The axis interval can be configured with one of the following strategies:

Step - Used for regular intervals which are separated by a fixed gap.
Values - Used for irregular intervals which occur at specific values.
Min / Max Spacing - Used for responsive intervals based on the chart size, separated by the rendered pixel gap range.

Step

The interval.step property defines the size of the fixed interval, expressed in the units of the respective axis.

If the configured interval results in too many items given the data domain and chart size, it will be ignored and the default interval will be applied.

Number Axes

For Number Axes, the step should be a number. For example, a step of 5, will display values at 0, 5, 10.

{
    interval: { step: 5 },
}

Log Axes

For Log Axes, the step should be a number.

This number increments the exponent to which the base of the logarithm is elevated. For example, a step of 2 will display values at 10^0, 10^2, 10^4.

Time Axes

For Time Axes and Ordinal Time Axes the step should be a TimeInterval. For example, a step of time.month will display values for every month. You can also use every to specify a step as a multiplier of a TimeInterval. For example, time.month.every(2), will display values for every second month.

{
    interval: { step: time.month },
}

Available TimeIntervals are:

year, utcYear
month, utcMonth
day, utcDay
hour, utcHour
minute
second
millisecond
sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday

If the step property of a time axis is set to a number, this will be interpreted as milliseconds.

Values

The interval.values property allows you to specify the precise array of values to display. Depending on the axis type, this should be an array consisting of number, Date, or String values.

{
    interval: {
        values: [50, 88, 100],
    },
}

Min / Max Spacing

The interval.minSpacing and interval.maxSpacing options defining the approximate minimum and maximum pixel gaps that should exist between values. You can provide one or both options as needed.

An appropriate number of items will be generated to meet the specified interval.minSpacing and interval.maxSpacing constraints, taking the rendered size of the chart into account.

Category axes do not support maxSpacing, as intervals are derived from the domain of category values.

{
    interval: {
        minSpacing: 15,
        maxSpacing: 25,
    }
}

In this example:

There is a button at the top of the chart to apply min / max spacing.
There is a grab handle in the bottom right to allow resizing of the chart to see how the interval changes with available space.

When minSpacing and maxSpacing are very close in value, the actual spacing may be outside the requested range. This is because the specified constraints may result in non-standard intervals rather than round intervals such as 1x, 2x, 5x, and 10x. To avoid this, set maxSpacing to be 2-3 times larger than minSpacing.

Next Up

Continue to the next section to learn about Axis Domain.

Getting started

Core features

Specialised Charts

Series

Gauges