Charting in MVC 4

Question

I have been searching for quite a while and have not been able to find what I am looking for.

I want to generate a chart in my controller and serve it to my view via a ViewModel. The two most useful articles I found are

http://www.codecapers.com/post/Build-a-Dashboard-With-Microsoft-Chart-Controls.aspx#tb

Charting in ASP.Net MVC 3

Both show you how to create the chart object, but they don't help me display it in the view in a way I desire. I understand you can save the image and simply open the image from your view, but what if I desire the chart to be interactive? Perhaps going to a another page when clicking a slice on a pie chart, or other useful "drill down" functionality.

Am I confused? Is this sort of functionality possible with pure asp.net mvc, or am I confusing the fancy features with a 3rd party charting library? If the former, how do I render my chart object public Chart queueChart { get; set; } in my view?

And just as a note, I am not interested in using a 3rd party charting library.

Controller:

//Query from db into model.queue
Chart chart = new Chart();
chart.Width = 600;
chart.Height = 400;
chart.Titles.Add("Title goes here");
chart.ChartAreas.Add(new ChartArea());
Series series = new Series();

series.ChartType = SeriesChartType.Pie;

foreach( Queue i in model.queue )
{
    string x = i.name;
    double y = i.count;

    series.Points.AddXY(x, y);
}

chart.Series.Add(series);

model.queueChart = chart;

Answer 1

Why not use a JavaScript library that does charting? These will offer lots of functionality and allow you to have interactive charts.

HighCharts

KendoUI