I did a thing at TechEd where I took a set of process data from my machine and turned it into a basic bar chart by writing some LINQ to XML and producing XAML as the output. I say "basic" because the chart was built from a bunch of ProgressBar elements with each of their values set to match the number of threads in a given process.
Following on from that, a number of people have asked me "How'd you generate XAML graphs using LINQ to XML" and so I thought I'd paste something here to share;
Imports <xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation">
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Dim data As New List(Of PointF)
Dim width = 8 * 96
Dim height = 6 * 96
For i As Single = 0 To (Math.PI * 2) Step (Math.PI / 50)
data.Add(New PointF(i, Math.Sin(i)))
Next
Dim xml = <Grid Width=<%= width %> Height=<%= height %> Background="Black">
<Polyline Stroke="White" Stretch="Fill" StrokeThickness="2">
<Polyline.Points>
<%= From p In data Select <Point X=<%= p.X %> Y=<%= p.Y %>/> %>
</Polyline.Points>
</Polyline>
</Grid>
xml.Save("c:\temp\graph.xaml")
Process.Start("c:\temp\graph.xaml")
End Sub
End Class
So, that's just a simple example using a Polyline in order to draw a Sine wave. You can go as far as you like with this stuff in that you can generate whatever XML you want from LINQ to XML and (consequently) whatever XAML you want :-)
Update:Ian quite rightly points out that this is not necessarily the only (or necessarily best) way to dynamically create a graph of WPF objects using LINQ. The reason why I went down this path was that it came from a "LINQ to XML" session where I was trying to make something visual in a cheap-and-cheerful manner so that perhaps explains the XAML based slant here :-)
Posted
Tue, Nov 13 2007 1:30 AM
by
mtaulty