WebChart Control Sample - Generating a Chart without saving to file

| Contact

Another sample of using the Chart control without saving to the file system

For more information see this sample (very similar)
So, I've received a lot of questions about how to set some properties using the ChartEngine directly and not the using ChartControl to avoid saving to the file system.
The most common questions are:

Can I set '<propertyname>' programmatically? Yes. You can do exactly the same things you can do using the ChartControl class. Absolutely all properties are accessible using the classes directly.
With some properties I get a NullReferenceException The reason for this is that I designed the ChartEngine class to be used by a wrapper (ChartControl) who knows which classes need to be created and will initialize them appropriately, however for performance reasons I don't initialize them so potentially someone can reuse the same object (say a ChartInterior instance). This might change in the future to simplify the development using ChartEngine, but of course necer making a trade-off with performance.
...

For this reason I decided to upload this sample that uses more properties in the ChartEngine and the rest of the OM to do a more "complex" chart so you can "copy/paste" the code.
To run it, just save the code into a .ASPX and browse to it. (Note that this sample does not require creating the WebCharts folder, etc), just copy the WebChart.dll in the \bin\ directory and browse to the page.
This is the way the generated image will look like:

<%@ Page Language="VB" contenttype="image/png" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Drawing" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="WebChart" %>
<script runat=server>
     Sub Page_Load(ByVal o As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim wcEng As New ChartEngine()
        wcEng.Size = New Size(600, 400)

        Dim wcCharts As New ChartCollection(wcEng)
        wcEng.Charts = wcCharts

        Dim slChart As New PieChart()
        slChart.Line.Color = Color.Yellow
        slChart.Legend = "Watts"
        slChart.ShowLineMarkers = False
        slChart.ShowLegend = True
        slChart.DataLabels.Visible = True
        slChart.Shadow.Visible = True
        slChart.Explosion = 8

        slChart.Data.Add(New ChartPoint("One", 12))
        slChart.Data.Add(New ChartPoint("Two", 22))
        slChart.Data.Add( New ChartPoint("Three", 2))

        wcCharts.Add(slChart)

        SetMoreProperties(wcEng)

        Dim bmp As Bitmap
        Dim memStream As New System.IO.MemoryStream()
        bmp = wcEng.GetBitmap()
        bmp.Save(memStream, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png)
        memStream.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream)
        Response.End()
    End Sub

    ' This are all Optional properties, You can call this method to change the look of your chart
    Private Sub SetMoreProperties(ByVal engine As ChartEngine)
        ' Set-up the XTitle
        Dim myFont As New System.Drawing.Font("Tahoma", 8)
        engine.XTitle = New ChartText()
        engine.HasChartLegend = true
    engine.Border.Color=Color.DarkGray
        engine.GridLines = WebChart.GridLines.Both
        Dim horizontalFormat As New StringFormat()
        horizontalFormat.LineAlignment = StringAlignment.Far
        engine.XTitle.StringFormat = horizontalFormat
        engine.XTitle.Text = "This is the XTitle"
        engine.XTitle.Font = myFont

        ' Set-up the YTitle
        engine.YTitle = New ChartText()
        engine.YTitle.Font = myFont
        Dim verticalFormat As New StringFormat()
        verticalFormat.FormatFlags = StringFormatFlags.DirectionVertical
        verticalFormat.Alignment = StringAlignment.Near
        engine.YTitle.StringFormat = verticalFormat
        engine.YTitle.Text = "This is the YTitle"

        ' Set-up the Title
        engine.Title = New ChartText()
    engine.Title.ForeColor = Color.White
    engine.Title.Font = new Font("Tahoma", 12, FontStyle.Bold)
        engine.Title.Text = "This is the Chart Title"

        ' Specify show XValues
        engine.ShowXValues = True
        engine.ShowYValues = True

        ' Some padding
        engine.Padding = 30
        engine.ChartPadding = 30

        ' some color
    engine.Background.Type = InteriorType.LinearGradient
    engine.Background.EndPoint = new Point(600,600)
        engine.Background.Color = Color.FromArgb(70, Color.DarkBlue)

        ' some color
        engine.PlotBackground.Color = Color.LightYellow
    End Sub
</script>