Practical WPF Charts and Graphics (Expert's Voice in .NET)

Creating 2D and 3D charts is one of the most common uses of computer graphics. Such charts can have wide applications in representing mathematical, physical, and economic functions in your daily life. Whether you are an engineer, a quantitative analyst, a teacher, or a student, you will end up dealing with charting applications to some degree.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a next-generation graphics platform that enables you to build advanced user interfaces incorporating documents, media, 2D and 3D graphics, and animations. It is an ideal development tool that allows you to not only generate data, but also easily represent data graphically.

Practical WPF Charts and Graphics provides all the tools you will need to develop professional chart and graphics applications in WPF and C#. This book will be useful for WPF and C# programmers of all skill levels, providing a complete and comprehensive explanation of WPF’s graphics capability and the creation of various charts, and paying special attention to the details of code implementation.

What you’ll learn

Understand the types of charts that can be developed in WPF and how WPF can be used to maximum effect in their development
Develop a wide range of charts that consist of not only simple 2D and 3D graphs, but also the multimedia elements, embedded documents, and animations now commonly found in cutting-edge applications
Adapt the wide selection of fully working demonstration charts that are provided with the book and integrate them into your own web site for instant results

Who this book is for

Practical Charts and Graphics is more than just a book—it's a powerful 2D and 3D charts and graphics package. You will find that many of the examples in the book can be immediately used in your real-world applications, and that many others will inspire you to create advanced graphical and sophisticated chart capabilities of your own.

This book is targeted at professional developers and those who are studying to become professionals. Its coverage is equally valuable to both groups, providing a strong reference for one audience and an excellent introduction to the other.

Table of Contents

Overview of WPF Programming
2D Transformations
WPF Graphics Basics in 2D
Colors and Brushes
2D Line charts
Specialized 2D Charts
Stock Charts
Interactive 2D Charts
2D Chart Controls
Data Interpolations
Curve Fitting
3D Transformations
WPF Graphics Basics in 3D
3D Charts with the WPF 3D Engine
3D Charts Without the WPF 3D Engine
Specialized 3D Charts

Customer Reviews:

Mixed feelings

By Dimitri Shvorob - January 6, 2011

I bought "Practical WPF Charts and Graphics" to learn how to draw scatter/line plots and histograms - no 3D for me - and found it perfectly adequate. The book and its companion site give you code for several plot types, so you can start playing in no time. I did, and then things went downhill. Presented code is, in my opinion, poorly written and needs heavy refactoring and expansion: the small class library I eventually ended up with has little in common with Mr. Xu's. The author does not bother with explanation, and is happy to let the code run: getters and setters alone add at least 10 pages, and large blocks of code migrate from one chapter to another. Proper editing could have cut down the page count by half or more. Although helpful, this is not a proper book, but a collection of code print-outs.

The Sun source for WPF graphics

By Robin T. Wernick - December 21, 2009

As a professional programmer I don't have a lot of time to waste learning all the details to master a new programming area. I had to buy five books on database programming to get one decent database working for my clients. With WPF I have found there are just three books to buy to master its intricacies. Get "Windows Presentation Foundation", "Pro WPF", and Dr. Wu's "Practical WPF Charts and Graphics". The other books are helpful, but not really necessary.

This book gets right down to the etails of mastering chart graphics. Within a few chapters, specialized charts are covered. Dr. Xu shows how to do almost every form of scientific and financial charting I have ever encountered. Although the code is designed to show off the approach to building a single chart application, the data series and configuration style objects introduced by the book can be easily altered to build multiple chart conglomerations for stock charts with indicators or scientific multiple view sets with... read more

Good Introduction To WPF Graphics but Doesn't Leverage Power of WPF

By Scott Mccain "ScottM" - January 7, 2011

When I first picked up this book I was very excited with the possibilities. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to give it a thorough read through before buying it and, needless to day, I was a bit disappointed.

The author may have a phD in theoretical physics but that doesn't translate very well to OOP design and approach. His lack of OOP left me scratching my head many times wondering why he was doing things the way he was doing them. I gave him a chance each time though to show me the pattern through the madness but I was always left flat.

His object heirachy leaves a lot to be desired (it's practically flat with very a very strange mix-in of responsibilities for classes (the author would do well to study SOLID design principles before attempting another OOP design).

There were so many places where he could have utilized the WPF framework (Dependency Properties, DataTemplates, Adorners, etc..) but the code basically boils down to a winforms... read more