Highchart, diffrent number of categories and series data - highcharts

Question

I have a chart which displays goals between 1995 and 2030. I need the series to "stop" at the current year.
The x-axis:
xAxis: {
categories: ['1995', '1996', '1997', '1998', '1999', '2000', '2001', '2002', '2003', '2004', '2005', '2006', '2007', '2008', '2009', '2010', '2011', '2012', '2015', '2016', '2017','2018', '2019', '2020', '2021', '2022', '2023', '2024', '2025', '2026', '2027' , '2028', '2029', '2030'],
tickmarkPlacement: 'on',
title: {
enabled: false
}
},
The series:
series: [{
name: 'Consumption',
data: [5020, 4350, 3090, 2500, 2100, 800]
}],
If I do like this, the categories is automatically matched to the number of series data.
Is there any option where I can keep all the categories?
http://jsfiddle.net/zh4yukL8/1/

Answer 1

There are multiple ways to do this, but answer (2) may be the most useful in your case.
1) Using nulls for unknown data
If you have missing data for certain years (and you want to stop the graph intermittently), you can write unknown data as a 'null' in the series data (as #wergeld mentions in his comment above).
This is useful if you are programmatically filling in data for your graph and your program is working through each category in turn. If you only have data up until the year 2000, your program should work up to your end year (or any other end category), placing nulls in the series where there is no data available.
2) Using pointStart & max with a datetime chart
Seeing as you're dealing with years, you can make this chart more effective at displaying your series. You can select the start year (pointStart) and end year (max); with your data starting from the start year, and the series continuing until the end year.
Your xAxis will change to:
xAxis: {
type: 'datetime',
max: Date.UTC(2030, 0, 1)
}
And you'll need some plotOptions*:
plotOptions: {
series: {
pointStart: Date.UTC(1995, 0, 1),
pointIntervalUnit: 'year'
}
}
Example here: http://jsfiddle.net/zh4yukL8/5/ .
If you have missing data for some years, you can fill these with nulls in the series data as method (1) explains, but the graph will continue until the max year anyway.
*While playing around with this example, I discovered that the AngularJS Highcharts library (highcharts-ng) you're using expects plotOptions to be dealt with differently to native Highcharts JS. So the example above works with your library, but for everyone else you will need to have plotOptions outside of the 'options' object.
3) Using a function to work out the length of your series
If your chart doesn't just deal with years and/or you want a discrete series represented, you can use the max property on the xAxis and a clever function to work out how many categories you have. The best way I can see to include this function in Highcharts seems to be on the load event of the chart.
You'll need to adapt your chart* options to include the event:
chart: {
events: {
load: function () {
var totalValues = this.xAxis[0].categories.length;
this.xAxis[0].setExtremes(0 , totalValues - 1 );
}
}
}
Example here: http://jsfiddle.net/zh4yukL8/6/
*As with method (2), the 'chart' options when using the highcharts-ng library for AngularJS are inside the 'options' object.