Databind Line Chart Design Time

[Betsy]

I have a SQLDataSource that produces three columns:AccountNumber, Date, Amount.  I want to databind a LineChart to have the AccountNumber drive the series, PostDate on XAxis and Amount on YAxis.  I'm part way there.  I have the DataGroupColumn set to AccountNumber so when I run the report a line generates for each AccountNumber.  The amount shows on the YAxis but I am getting 1,2,3,4,5 on the XAxis.  How do I get my date values to show on the XAxis?  I tried usagechart.PlotArea.XAxis.DataLabelsColumn = "PostDate" but thats not doing anything.  Can I format my data values to not show cents?  Do I have to do that in the NeedDatasource or can I do it from the designer?

[Peter]

Hi Heather,

Please check out the Displaying Incremental DateTime Values in the X-Axis of RadChart blog that elaborates on using date values for the XAxis.

Best wishes,
Peter
the Telerik team

[Betsy]

OK after testing and testing and testing I thnk I found the issue.  I downloaded the sample from the blog post you referred me to and finally got my app working.  HOWEVER, If I attempt to apply a skin to the chart I cannot get the labels to display with the date format.

[Steve]

Hello Heather,

We're not sure how setting the skin causes the problem since we have a runnable example of this functionality with Skin applied, see it here. Can you confirm that the problem occurs when setting skin to the project from the blog post?

Kind regards,
Steve
the Telerik team

[MikeWiese]

Hi Heather,

There is a problem that setting the 'Skin' Property of a chart in the report designer obliterates many of the chart PlotArea properties. I have had problems with the following, for example:

• Appearance.Dimensions.Margins
• XAxis.Appearance.ValueFormat
• XAxis.Appearance.CustomFormat
• XAxis.Appearance.LabelAppearance.RotationAngle
• XAxis.Appearance.LabelAppearance.Position.AlignedPosition

On setting the chart's Skin property in the designer, these properties (and others no doubt) all revert to default values.

Furthermore, you can't use the designer to set these properties back once you have set a Skin property. You can try, and they look OK in the designer, but so long as the 'Skin' property is not null, they are ignored at runtime. 

This has come up at least a couple of times in these forums and has been acknowledged by Telerik as a bug. but no fix yet. As they suggested, the only recourse is to set the desired properties programatically in the constructor of your report. In my case, it looked something like the following:

public MyReport()
{
    //
    // Required for telerik Reporting designer support
    //
    InitializeComponent();
    //
    // TODO: Add any constructor code after InitializeComponent call
    //
    // We need to set these graphical properties here, as the presence of a Skin cause them to be overwritten:
    this.myChart.PlotArea.XAxis.Appearance.ValueFormat = ChartValueFormat.ShortDate;
    this.myChart.PlotArea.XAxis.Appearance.CustomFormat = "dd-MMM";
    this.myChart.PlotArea.XAxis.Appearance.LabelAppearance.RotationAngle = 270;
    this.myChart.PlotArea.XAxis.Appearance.LabelAppearance.Position.AlignedPosition = AlignedPositions.Top;
    // Sizing of chart area
    this.myChart.PlotArea.Appearance.Dimensions.Margins = "14%, 4%, 15%, 10%";
}

I'm running version 5.0.11.510 (Telerik Reporting Q1 2011 SP1). Hopefully a fix will come soon.

Regards,
Mike