I need to show a chart from data returned from an API.
This API could potentially return millions of results, but it would tax the server heavily.
Thus, I'm looking for a way to return a fewer number of results and still show a trend in the chart. Basically, I'm looking to "smooth" the line of the graph by showing only relevant points.
Is there a .NET library that could help me in this implementation? Or perhaps a "smoothing" function that takes a limit on the number of points to results?
What would be your target number of results? One approach would be to just take a sampling of the points. For every 10 points you have, return 1, for instance. In which case, you could use Linq to accomplish this: Sampling a list with linq
This doesn't address the "showing only relevant points" part of your question, though. That's a little harder to solve programmatically. What does "relevant" mean in your data? Exceeding a certain deviation?
So maybe a moving average of your data would work. Take 10 points at a time, average them, return 1 point. Like this example: Smoothing data from a sensor
With either of those approaches, you can trade off accuracy and 'smoothness' by varying the "10" in the above examples. The higher the number, the "smoother" your result.
