Most frequent errors

If you tried to open a page with a chart in your browser, and got this error message, don't hurry to upgrade your Flash player, as most likely it is up to date. This message is also displayed when the swfobject.js file is not found. This means that you should check whether the path to swfobject.js in your HTML file is correct: <script type="text/javascript" src="amline/swfobject.js"></script>

If all you see is a blank space where your chart should be, then the first thing you should check is whether the path to your SWF file is correct. Check this line in the HTML file: var so = new SWFObject("amline/amline.swf", "amline", "520", "400", "8", "#FFFFFF");

If you see the following message: "Error loading file: some_file_name", then both the swfobject.js and the SWF files were loaded successfully. This message is displayed in two cases: 1) An important file is not found. You should check whether the paths to your data and settings files are correct. Check the following lines:

  so.addVariable("settings_file", escape("amline/amline_settings.xml"));  
  so.addVariable("data_file", escape("amline/amline_data.xml")); 

2) An important file is completely empty. If you want the chart to show the "no data" error message to viewers, then there should be at least one blank space in the data file.

This message is usually displayed when your data file is in CSV format, but you didn't set the data type to CSV in the settings file. Check the following line in the settings file: <data_type>csv</data_type> If your data file is in XML format, then you can leave this value empty, or set it to "xml" instead of "csv".

1) The settings file was cached by the browser. This happens only if you view the chart from a web server. Try to clear your browser's cache and reload the page.

2) The settings file is corrupted. The most simple way to check whether your settings XML file is corrupted is to open it with a browser. If it has errors, the browser will show them.

The data is probably cached. You can clear the browser cache, and set <add_time_stamp>true</add_time_stamp>. This will make the chart reload the data every time.

URLs added to a slice, bullet or column will only work if you view the chart from a web server, and will not work if you simply opened the page from your hard drive. This is because of the Flash player's security features.

In order to use colons or periods in the URLs of your settings or data files, you must use absolute URLs (beginning with http://) Otherwise, you will get the "error loading file" message. This problem is caused by the Flash player, not amCharts. So, instead of:

so.addVariable("settings_file", "settings.php?time=22:00");

you should have:

so.addVariable("settings_file", http://www.yourdomain.com/settings.php?time=22:00A);

However, you must also remember that using absolute paths can cause problems in some cases. So the best solution would be not to use colons or periods in URLs - replace them with some other characters if you can.