Home > Report Designer > Report Controls > Report Elements > Charts

Charts

This document introduces the basics of using the XRChart control in XtraReports, and describes its main features.

Because in most aspects, XRChart duplicates all the general functionality of the ChartControl, for more detailed information on its use, see the XtraCharts documentation.

The XRChart control can only be used in XtraReports. To add charts to your Windows® Forms and ASP.NET application, use the ChartControl and WebChartControl controls of the XtraCharts Suite, which should be purchased separately from XtraReports.

The following sections are available in this document.

• Chart Overview
• Using Charts in Your Reports
• Pivot Charting

The XRChart control visualizes the series of points using the available 2D chart types or 3D chart types. The chart type is defined via the View property of a series. And, a single chart can display multiple series, if their view types are compatible.

The following image illustrates a 3D Pie chart.

A Chart contains multiple visual elements (diagram, axes, titles, labels, strips, constant lines, etc.), for which design-time selection is supported (since, they are not System.ComponentModel.Component descendants). And, when any of these elements is selected, its properties are shown in the Property Grid.

To provide data for a Chart, you first need to create a data source (any object which implements either System.Collections.IList, System.ComponentModel.IListSource or System.ComponentModel.IBindingList interfaces), and then assign it to the XRChart.DataSource property. And, if you want the data source to be auto-populated by the Chart (at design and runtime), you should specify its XRChart.DataAdapter property. Otherwise, you will need to manually populate it

Then, do one of the following.

• Bind each series separately.

  To do this, create one or several series and add it to the chart's XRChart.Series collection. Then, specify which data fields should be used as point arguments (SeriesBase.ArgumentDataMember) and which should be used as points values (SeriesBase.ValueDataMembers).

• Bind the entire chart to data.

  This approach to data binding is useful when series names are separately stored in a data source, so that all series can be auto-generated. To do this, assign the data field that contains series names to the XRChart.SeriesDataMember property. Then, specify the data fields used for series points arguments and values, to the SeriesBase.ArgumentDataMember and SeriesBase.ValueDataMembers properties of the SeriesBase object returned by the XRChart.SeriesTemplate property.

You should maintain the compatibility of your data with the SeriesBase.ArgumentScaleType and SeriesBase.ValueScaleType properties.

To learn more on using Charts, see the XtraCharts Documentation.

When using XRChart in reports, it should not be used in conjunction with cross-band controls. To enframe your Chart, use XRPanel.

The XRChart.KeepTogether property has no effect in XRChart.

The XRPivotGrid control stands as a familiar data source to the Chart, meaning that you can simply assign a Pivot Grid instance to a chart's XRChart.DataSource property, for all data and layout settings to be defined automatically.

These settings can be accessed via the XRChart.PivotGridDataSourceOptions property.

To learn more on this, see Pivot Charting (Integration with the Pivot Grid Control).

See also