Line Chart in WPF
The WPF Toolkit released in June 2009 comes with a data
visualization assembly called System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit.dll
that hosts the charting functionality in WPF. This article demonstrates how to draw line charts
using the WPF Toolkit.
Note: This
article is written by using the WPF Toolkit June 2009 that you can download
from here: WPF Toolkit - Release: WPF Toolkit June 2009. This toolkit may be a part of WPF in near future versions.
Adding WPF Toolkit Reference
Before you can use any
charting related functionality in a WPF application, you must download the WPF
Toolkit. After that you need to add a reference to an assembly.
To add a reference,
right click the References folder of your project in Solution Explorer and
select Add Reference. This action will open the Add Reference dialog as you can
in the following Figure 1. On this dialog, select Browse option and browse the System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit.dll
assembly from the folder where you installed the WPF Toolkit. This assembly
resides in the Binaries folder.
Tip: If
you do not want to download WPF Toolkit, you can download the attached project
and copy WPFToolkit.dll and
System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit.dll assemblies from this
project to the bin folder of your project and add reference.
Figure 1
Once you add the reference, you will see the System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit
added to your References dialog as you see in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Now, the next step is to import the System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.toolkit
and the System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting namespaces to the
page. Once you type xmlns= in your page,
you will see these namespaces in the Intellisense. Select and add both of them
to your page as you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3
The final reference added to the page looks like following.
As you can see here, I added name of this reference to ToolkitRef.
xmlns:DV="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"
xmlns:DVC="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"
Now you will see DVC in your page and once you select it,
you will notice all Charting related elements added to the Intellisense. To add
a Chart control to your page, just select the Chart control from the list. The
list of charting related elements looks like Figure 4.
Figure 4
Creating a Chart
The Chart element
represents a WPF Chart control in XAML.
< DVC:Chart></DVC:Chart>
The code snippet in Listing 1 creates a Chart and sets its
width, height, and background properties of the Chart control. The Title and
LegendTitle properties represent the title of the chart and the title of
legend.
<DVC:Chart
Name="mcChart"
Width="400" Height="250"
Background="YellowGreen"
Foreground="DarkBlue"
Title="Area
Chart"
LegendTitle="Month
Rating" />
Listing 1
The output of Listing 1
looks like Figure 5.
Figure 5
Chart Types
The Series attribute of
the Chart element is used to create a chart type. If you see in Figure 6, you
will notice BarSeries, ColumnSeries, LineSeries, PieSeries, AreaSeries and
ScatterSeries attributes and based on the attribute, the chart will be created.
Figure 6
Line Chart
The code snippet in
Listing 2 creates a line chart by setting Chart.Series to LineSeries. As you
may see, the binding is occurred on Key and Value fields of a data source.
<DVC:Chart
Canvas.Top="80" Canvas.Left="10" Name="mcChart"
Width="400" Height="250"
Background="LightSteelBlue">
<DVC:Chart.Series>
<DVC:LineSeries
Title=" Monthly Count"
IndependentValueBinding="{Binding Path=Key}"
DependentValueBinding="{Binding Path=Value}">
</DVC:LineSeries>
</DVC:Chart.Series>
</DVC:Chart>
Listing 2
The code snippet in
Listing 3 creates a collection in KeyValuePair form and sets the ItemsSource
property of the chart series. Same data can be used for other chart types.
private void LoadLineChartData()
{
((LineSeries)mcChart.Series[0]).ItemsSource
=
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>[]{
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>(DateTime.Now,
100),
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>(DateTime.Now.AddMonths(1),
130),
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>(DateTime.Now.AddMonths(2),
150),
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>(DateTime.Now.AddMonths(3),
125),
new KeyValuePair<DateTime,
int>(DateTime.Now.AddMonths(4),155)
};
}
Listing 3
The output looks like Figure 7.
Figure 7
Summary
This tutorial discusses how to use WPF Toolkit to create a
line chart in WPF using C#.