How do you set DateTime range on X axis for System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting?

Question

Presently I am attempting to display a chart using windows forms that shows monthly data on the X axis and an integer value on the Y axis; however, I am not setting the range properly for the X Axis, where MonthYear is a DateTime:

var pnChart = new System.Windows.Forms.Panel(); pnChart.Controls.Clear(); DataTable dtChartData = myDatabaseLayer.BuildDataTable("SELECT Added, Modified FROM tblStatistics WHERE ApplicationID = " + intApplicationID + " ORDER BY MonthYear"); Chart chart = GenerateChart(dtChartData, pnChart.Width, pnChart.Height, "ActiveBorder", 6); chart.Series[0].XValueType = ChartValueType.DateTime; chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.LabelStyle.Format = "yyyy-MM-dd"; chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Interval = 1; chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.IntervalType = DateTimeIntervalType.Months; chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.IntervalOffset = 1; pnChart.Controls.Add(chart); 

The problem is, when the chart is displayed, the X axis has the datetime "1900-01-01" so my question is, how do I set the date range to start at 2013-01-01?

Please note that I have searched the internet and tried the following settings, but they do not give me the correct range:

chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Maximum = DateTime.Now.Ticks; 

Or,

chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Crossing = DateTime.Now.Ticks; 

Or,

chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Minimum = DateTime.Now.Ticks; 

TIA.

UPDATE: Please note that I found how to set the range properly using this:

            chart.Series[0].XValueType = ChartValueType.DateTime;             DateTime minDate = new DateTime(2013, 01, 01);             DateTime maxDate = DateTime.Now;             chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Minimum = minDate.ToOADate();             chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Maximum = maxDate.ToOADate(); 

The above code sets the proper range now for the X axis; however, now chart itself is blank.

UPDATE 2:

Yes, thank you DasKrumelmonster--that fixed it! I was using code from http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/168056/Windows-Charting-Application, and simply should have looked more closely at the author's protected internal Chart GenerateChart(DataTable dtChartDataSource, int width, int height, string bgColor, int intType) function. To correct the issue, I changed these lines:

foreach (DataRow dr in dtChartDataSource.Rows) {     double dataPoint = 0;     double.TryParse(dr[dc.ColumnName].ToString(), out dataPoint);     DataPoint objDataPoint = new DataPoint() { AxisLabel = "series", YValues = new double[] { dataPoint } };      chart.Series[series].Points.Add(dataPoint); } 

To this:

DateTime dtStart = new DateTime(2013, 01, 01); int intMonthCounter = 0; //Add data points to the series foreach (DataRow dr in dtChartDataSource.Rows) {     double dataPoint = 0;     double.TryParse(dr[dc.ColumnName].ToString(), out dataPoint);     DataPoint objDataPoint = new DataPoint() { AxisLabel = "series", YValues = new double[] { dataPoint } };     chart.Series[series].Points.AddXY(dtStart.AddMonths(intMonthCounter),  dataPoint);     intMonthCounter++; } 

Thank you!

Answer 1

Cannot reproduce. I tried this code:

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {     var s = new Series();     s.ChartType = SeriesChartType.Line;      var d = new DateTime(2013, 04, 01);      s.Points.AddXY(d, 3);     s.Points.AddXY(d.AddMonths(-1), 2);     s.Points.AddXY(d.AddMonths(-2), 1);     s.Points.AddXY(d.AddMonths(-3), 4);      chart1.Series.Clear();     chart1.Series.Add(s);       chart1.Series[0].XValueType = ChartValueType.DateTime;     chart1.ChartAreas.Add(new ChartArea()); // In some cases the winforms designer adds this already     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.LabelStyle.Format = "yyyy-MM-dd";     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Interval = 1;     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.IntervalType = DateTimeIntervalType.Months;     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.IntervalOffset = 1;      chart1.Series[0].XValueType = ChartValueType.DateTime;     DateTime minDate = new DateTime(2013, 01, 01).AddSeconds(-1);     DateTime maxDate = new DateTime(2013, 05, 01); // or DateTime.Now;     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Minimum = minDate.ToOADate();     chart1.ChartAreas[0].AxisX.Maximum = maxDate.ToOADate(); } 

Maybe I fixed your error on the way.

It works as expected: One line with four data points, all x-axes labels are visible and so is the graph itself. If there is still an issue, please provide full testing code along with a description of what should happen vs. what actually happens.