Initialization

When you develop an application with dhtmlxGantt, the first thing you need is to initialize or, simply speaking, to display the Gantt chart on the page.

To display a basic Gantt on the page, follow 3 steps:

Include the dhtmlxGantt code files on the page.
Create a DIV container on the page.
Initialize dhtmlxGantt in the newly created container with the init method. As a parameter the method takes an HTML container (or its id) that the Gantt chart will be displayed in.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <script src="codebase/dhtmlxgantt.js"></script>
   <link href="codebase/dhtmlxgantt.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
    <div id="gantt_here" style='width:1000px; height:400px;'></div>
    <script type="text/javascript">        gantt.init("gantt_here");
    </script>
</body>
</html>

desktop/init_gantt_front.png

Related sample: Basic initialization

How to add Gantt source files into a project

You can add Gantt code file into your project in several ways, depending on the type of an application you create:

Include files via the <script> tag
Import files into ES6/7 and TypeScript apps
Include files into a RequireJS-based app

Include files via the <script> tag

The dhtmlxGantt requires including 2 code files on the page:

dhtmlxgantt.js
dhtmlxgantt.css

<script src="codebase/dhtmlxgantt.js"></script>
<link href="codebase/dhtmlxgantt.css" rel="stylesheet">

Let's quickly explore the structure of the dhtmlxGantt package to find out where to look for the files.

Main folders and files that make up the dhtmlxGantt package are:

sources - the source code files of the library. The files are not minified and easy-to-read. The package is mostly intended to be used for components' debugging.
samples - the code samples.
docs - the full documentation of the component.
codebase - the packed code files of the library. These files have much smaller size and intended to be used in production. In your apps you need to use files from this folder.

Import files into ES6/7 and TypeScript apps

Use the following command to import files:

import { gantt } from 'dhtmlx-gantt';

For the Commercial, Enterprise or Ultimate version the command look like this:

import { gantt, Gantt } from 'dhtmlx-gantt';

React example

An example of importing dhtmlxGantt files into a React-based app:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { gantt } from 'dhtmlx-gantt';
import 'dhtmlx-gantt/codebase/dhtmlxgantt.css';
 
export default class Gantt extends Component {
  componentDidUpdate() {
    gantt.render();
  }
  componentDidMount() {
    gantt.init(this.ganttContainer);
    gantt.parse(this.props.tasks);
  }
 
  render() {
    return (
      <div
        ref={(input) => { this.ganttContainer = input }}
        style=width: '100%', height: '100%'
      ></div>
    );
  }
}

Check a tutorial on the usage of dhtmlxGantt with React on the blog.

Angular example

An example of importing dhtmlxGantt files into an Angular-based app:

import {Component,ElementRef,OnInit,ViewChild,ViewEncapsulation} from '@angular/core';
import {TaskService} from '../services/task.service';
import {LinkService} from '../services/link.service';
import {Task} from '../models/task';
import {Link} from '../models/link';
 
 
import { gantt, Gantt } from 'dhtmlx-gantt';
 
@Component({
    encapsulation: ViewEncapsulation.None,
    selector: 'gantt',
    styleUrls: ['./gantt.component.css'],
    providers: [TaskService, LinkService],
    template: `<div #gantt_here class='gantt-chart'></div>`,
})
export class GanttComponent implements OnInit {
    @ViewChild('gantt_here') ganttContainer: ElementRef;
 
    constructor(private taskService:TaskService, private linkService:LinkService){ }
 
    ngOnInit() {
        gantt.config.xml_date = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%i';
        gantt.init(this.ganttContainer.nativeElement);
        Promise.all([this.taskService.get(), this.linkService.get()])
            .then(([data, links]) => {
                gantt.parse({ data, links });
            });
    }
}

Check a tutorial on the usage of dhtmlxGantt with Angular on the blog.

Vue example

Check a tutorial on the usage of dhtmlxGantt with Vue.js on the blog.

Include files into a RequireJS-based app

To include dhtmlxGantt files into a RequireJS-based app, you need to follow the logic shown in the example below:

requirejs(["codebase/dhtmlxgantt"], function(dhx){
  var gantt = dhx.gantt;
  var Gantt = dhx.Gantt;// for Enterprise builds
 
  gantt.init("gantt_here");
  gantt.parse({
    data: [
      { id:1, text:"Project #2", start_date:"01-04-2018", 
        duration:18, progress:0.4, open:true },
      { id:2, text:"Task #1", start_date:"02-04-2018", 
        duration:8, progress:0.6, parent:1 },
      { id:3, text:"Task #2", start_date:"11-04-2018", 
        duration:8, progress:0.6, parent:1 }
    ],
    links: [
      { id:1, source:1, target:2, type:"1" },
      { id:2, source:2, target:3, type:"0" }
    ]
  });
});

The dhtmlxGantt library will return an object with fields gantt and Gantt (in Commercial, Enterprise or Ultimate versions) - the gantt and Gantt objects described here.

When using Gantt with custom extensions in RequireJS, you should specify the shim config for RequireJS and directly set the dependency of extensions from Gantt in it.

The example below demonstrates how a custom extension file custom_tooltip_plugin.js can be set in the correct way:

requirejs.config({
  paths: {
    "dhtmlxgantt": "../../codebase/dhtmlxgantt",
    "ext/dhtmlxgantt_custom_tooltip": "../custom_tooltip_plugin"
  },
  shim: {
    "ext/dhtmlxgantt_custom_tooltip": ["dhtmlxgantt"]
  }
});
 
requirejs(["dhtmlxgantt"], 
function (dhx) {
  var gantt = dhx.gantt;
 
  var date_to_str = gantt.date.date_to_str(gantt.config.task_date);
  var today = new Date(2018, 3, 5);
  gantt.addMarker({
    start_date: today,
    css: "today",
    text: "Today",
    title: "Today: " + date_to_str(today)
  });
 
  gantt.init("gantt_here");
  gantt.parse({
    data: [
      { id:1, text:"Project #2", start_date:"01-04-2018",
        duration:18, progress:0.4, open:true },
      { id:2, text:"Task #1", start_date:"02-04-2018", 
        duration:8, progress:0.6, parent:1 },
      { id:3, text:"Task #2", start_date:"11-04-2018", 
        duration:8, progress:0.6, parent:1 }
    ],
    links: [
      { id:1, source:1, target:2, type:"1" },
      { id:2, source:2, target:3, type:"0" }
    ]
  });
});

Check that the module name for any file inside the package is specified as a relative path inside the 'codebase' folder of the package plus the filename, for instance:

core library:

"dhtmlxgantt": "./vendor/dhtmlxgantt/dhtmlxgantt"

Full screen mode

To correctly display a Gantt chart in the full-screen mode in different browsers, define the following style on the page:

<style type="text/css" media="screen">    html, body{
        margin:0px;
        padding:0px;
        height:100%;
        overflow:hidden;
    }
</style>