You can download the latest version of [Chart.js on GitHub](https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js/releases/latest) or just use these [Chart.js CDN](https://cdnjs.com/libraries/Chart.js) links.
To create a chart, we need to instantiate the `Chart` class. To do this, we need to pass in the node, jQuery instance, or 2d context of the canvas of where we want to draw the chart. Here's an example.
It's that easy to get started using Chart.js! From here you can explore the many options that can help you customise your charts with scales, tooltips, labels, colors, custom actions, and much more.
This concept was introduced in Chart.js 1.0 to keep configuration DRY, and allow for changing options globally across chart types, avoiding the need to specify options for each instance, or the default for a particular chart type.
Chart.js merges configurations and options in a few places with the global defaults using chart type defaults and scales defaults. This way you can be as specific as you want in your individual chart configs, or change the defaults for Chart.js as a whole.
maintainAspectRatio | Boolean | true | Maintain the original canvas aspect ratio `(width / height)` when resizing
events | Array[String] | `["mousemove", "mouseout", "click", "touchstart", "touchmove", "touchend"]` | Events that the chart should listen to for tooltips and hovering
*hover*.onHover | Function | null | Called when any of the events fire. Called in the context of the chart and passed an array of active elements (bars, points, etc)
*hover*.mode | String | 'single' | Sets which elements hover. Acceptable options are `'single'`, `'label'`, or `'dataset'`. `single` highlights the closest element. `label` highlights elements in all datasets at the same `X` value. `dataset` highlights the closest dataset.
*hover*.animationDuration | Number | 400 | Duration in milliseconds it takes to animate hover style changes
onClick | Function | null | Called if the event is of type 'mouseup' or 'click'. Called in the context of the chart and passed an array of active elements
legendCallback | Function | ` function (chart) { }` | Function to generate a legend. Receives the chart object to generate a legend from. Default implementation returns an HTML string.
*labels*.generateLabels: | Function | `function(chart) { }` | Generates legend items for each thing in the legend. Default implementation returns the text + styling for the color box. Styles that can be returned are `fillStyle`, `strokeStyle`, `lineCap`, `lineDash`, `lineDashOffset`, `lineWidth`, `lineJoin`. Return a `hidden` attribute to indicate that the label refers to something that is not visible. A strikethrough style will be given to the text in this case.
mode | String | 'single' | Sets which elements appear in the tooltip. Acceptable options are `'single'` or `'label'`. `single` highlights the closest element. `label` highlights elements in all datasets at the same `X` value.
Label | | | There are three labels you can control. `title`, `body`, `footer` the star (\*) represents one of these three. *(i.e. titleFontFamily, footerSpacing)*
callbacks | Object | - | V2.0 introduces callback functions as a replacement for the template engine in v1. The tooltip has the following callbacks for providing text. For all functions, 'this' will be the tooltip object create from the Chart.Tooltip constructor
`return`| String or Array[Strings] | | All functions must return either a string or an array of strings. Arrays of strings are treated as multiple lines of text.
onProgress | Function | none | Callback called on each step of an animation. Passed a single argument, an object, containing the chart instance and an object with details of the animation.
*line*.backgroundColor | Color | `Chart.defaults.global.defaultColor` | Default line fill color
*line*.borderWidth | Number | 3 | Default line stroke width
*line*.borderColor | Color | `Chart.defaults.global.defaultColor` | Default line stroke color
*line*.borderCapStyle | String | 'butt' | Default line cap style. See [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/lineCap)
*line*.borderDash | Array | `[]` | Default line dash. See [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/setLineDash)
*line*.borderDashOffset | Number | 0.0 | Default line dash offset. See [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/lineDashOffset)
*line*.borderJoinStyle | String | 'miter' | Default line join style. See [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/lineJoin)
When supplying colors to Chart options, you can use a number of formats. You can specify the color as a string in hexadecimal, RGB, or HSL notations.
You can also pass a [CanvasGradient](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasGradient) object. You will need to create this before passing to the chart, but using it you can achieve some interesting effects.
The final option is to pass a [CanvasPattern](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CanvasPattern) object. For example, if you wanted to fill a dataset with a pattern from an image you could do the following.
```javascript
var img = new Image();
img.src = 'https://example.com/my_image.png';
img.onload = function() {
var ctx = document.getElementById('canvas').getContext('2d');
var fillPattern = ctx.CreatePattern(img, 'repeat');