Implementing Drill-Down Functionality
In this article you’ll see the basic of how to use the drill-down functionality of the ASP.NET AJAX Chart and working through the online demo, apply examples to make a drill-down Column chart.
You can implement drill-down functionality for the RadHtmlChart control by incorporating its Client-side API and updating the chart via AJAX. This will allow you to display more detailed data on the chart control by clicking on a specific series item.
The online demo Drill-Down Chart, shows how to use the drill-down functionality of the chart. (You should view this drill-down chart in a browser, clicking on it to drill into the pieces, as you read this article.)On the first chart, the data is grouped by the greatest time span, which is year. The year is divided into quarters.Click on an item on the chart to "drill down" and see the values corresponding to the quarters of the selected year.Each quarter consists of three months. After clicking to "drill down" into a quarter for the selected year, you can see the values for each month in the selected quarter.
Example 1: The following steps describe the approach for implementing the drill-down functionality with code snippets from the online drill-down demo previously referred to.
-
Handle the OnSeriesClick client-side event (Example 1.1) in order to send to the server information about the clicked series item via an AJAX request. The request is not initiated if the currently displayed data is from the most detailed level of presentation (in our case this is the data presented by months):
Example 1.1: Send information about the clicked series to the Server.
ASP.NET<script type="text/javascript"> function OnSeriesClick(args) { if (args.series.name != "Months") $find("<%= RadAjaxManager1.ClientID %>").ajaxRequest(args.category); } </script>
-
On the server-side, handle the AJAX request an, depending on the current level of data presentation and the clicked series item, change the data source and the settings of RadHtmlChart. As shown in Example 1.2, if the current name of the series is "Years", the year corresponding to the clicked series item is retrieved and it is used as a parameter for the RadHtmlChart data source, as the new data should be from the selected year. Also, the properties of the chart control are modified to match the new level of presentation and a new data source that will provide the new data is specified.
Example 1.2: RadHtmlChart updated on Ajax request.
protected void RadAjaxManager1_AjaxRequest(object sender, AjaxRequestEventArgs e)
{
string seriesName = RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.Series[0].Name;
if (seriesName == "Years")
{
Year = int.Parse(e.Argument);
SqlDataSource2.SelectParameters[0].DefaultValue = Year.ToString();
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.XAxis.DataLabelsField = "Quarter";
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.Series[0].DataFieldY = "Rev";
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.Series[0].Name = "Quarters";
RadHtmlChart1.DataSourceID = "SqlDataSource2";
}
else
{
if (seriesName == "Quarters")
{
int quarter = int.Parse(e.Argument);
SqlDataSource3.SelectParameters[0].DefaultValue = Year.ToString();
SqlDataSource3.SelectParameters[1].DefaultValue = quarter.ToString();
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.XAxis.DataLabelsField = "Month";
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.Series[0].DataFieldY = "Rev";
RadHtmlChart1.PlotArea.Series[0].Name = "Months";
RadHtmlChart1.DataSourceID = "SqlDataSource3";
}
}
}
The AJAX requests in Example 1 are implemented via the RadAjaxManager control. You can find more information about it in this help article.