Chart Rendering

Creating Charts

Aspose.Cells APIs support creating a variety of Excel charts as detailed under the topic Creating & Customizing Excel Charts. In order to demonstrate the usage of Aspose.Cells APIs to render the charts in image and PDF formats, we will create a chart of type Column as per the following snippet.

Aspose::Cells::Startup();

// Output directory path
U16String outDir(u"..\\Data\\02_OutputDirectory\\");

// Create a new workbook
Workbook workbook;

// Get first worksheet which is created by default
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.GetWorksheets().Get(0);

// Adding sample values to cells
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"A1").PutValue(50);
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"A2").PutValue(100);
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"A3").PutValue(150);
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"B1").PutValue(4);
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"B2").PutValue(20);
worksheet.GetCells().Get(u"B3").PutValue(50);

// Adding a chart to the worksheet
int chartIndex = worksheet.GetCharts().Add(Aspose::Cells::Charts::ChartType::Column, 5, 0, 20, 8);

// Accessing the instance of the newly added chart
Chart chart = worksheet.GetCharts().Get(chartIndex);

// Adding SeriesCollection (chart data source) to the chart ranging from "A1" cell to "B3"
chart.GetNSeries().Add(u"A1:B3", true);

// Path of output image file
U16String outputChartImage = outDir + u"out1image.png";
chart.ToImage(outputChartImage, ImageType::Png);

// Path of output pdf file
U16String outputPdfFile = outDir + u"out1pdf.pdf";

// Saving chart to PDF
chart.ToPdf(outputPdfFile);

Aspose::Cells::Cleanup();

Rendering Charts

Aspose.Cells APIs support converting the Excel charts to image and PDF formats without requiring any additional tools or applications. To provide the rendering support, the Chart class has exposed ToImage and ToPdf methods with a variety of overloads to best suit application requirements.

Rendering Charts to Images

The Chart.ToImage method has a variety of overloads to support both simple and advanced rendering. If the application requirement is to render the chart in its default dimensions, we suggest you use the Chart.ToImage method as follows.

// Path of output image file
U16String outputChartImage = outDir + u"out1image.png";

// Saving the chart to image file
chart.ToImage(outputChartImage, ImageType::Png);

Rendering Chart to PDF

In order to render the chart to PDF format, the Aspose.Cells APIs have exposed the Chart.ToPdf method with the ability to store the resultant PDF to a disk path or stream.

// Path of output pdf file
U16String outputPdfFile = outDir + u"out1pdf.pdf";

// Saving chart to PDF
chart.ToPdf(outputPdfFile);

Supported Chart Types for Rendering

There are a few chart types that are currently not supported for rendering. Such chart types contain N in the Supported column of the table below.

Chart type	Chart sub-type	Supported
Column	Column	Y
	ColumnStacked	Y
	Column100PercentStacked	Y
	Column3DClustered	Y
	Column3DStacked	Y
	Column3D100PercentStacked	Y
	Column3D	Y
Bar	Bar	Y
	BarStacked	Y
	Bar100PercentStacked	Y
	Bar3DClustered	Y
	Bar3DStacked	Y
	Bar3D100PercentStacked	Y
Line	Line	Y
	LineStacked	Y
	Line100PercentStacked	Y
	LineWithDataMarkers	Y
	LineStackedWithDataMarkers	Y
	Line100PercentStackedWithDataMarkers	Y
	Line3D	Y
Pie	Pie	Y
	Pie3D	Y
	PiePie	Y
	PieExploded	Y
	Pie3DExploded	Y
	PieBar	Y
Scatter	Scatter	Y
	ScatterConnectedByCurvesWithDataMarker	Y
	ScatterConnectedByCurvesWithoutDataMarker	Y
	ScatterConnectedByLinesWithDataMarker	Y
	ScatterConnectedByLinesWithoutDataMarker	Y
Area	Area	Y
	AreaStacked	Y
	Area100PercentStacked	Y
	Area3D	Y
	Area3DStacked	Y
	Area3D100PercentStacked	Y
Doughnut	Doughnut	Y
	DoughnutExploded	Y
Radar	Radar	Y
	RadarWithDataMarkers	Y
	RadarFilled	Y
Surface	Surface3D	N
	SurfaceWireframe3D	N
	SurfaceContour	N
	SurfaceContourWireframe	N
Bubble	Bubble	Y
	Bubble3D	N
Stock	StockHighLowClose	Y
	StockOpenHighLowClose	Y
	StockVolumeHighLowClose	Y
	StockVolumeOpenHighLowClose	Y
Cylinder	Cylinder	Y
	CylinderStacked	Y
	Cylinder100PercentStacked	Y
	CylindricalBar	Y
	CylindricalBarStacked	Y
	CylindricalBar100PercentStacked	Y
	CylindricalColumn3D	Y
Cone	Cone	Y
	ConeStacked	Y
	Cone100PercentStacked	Y
	ConicalBar	Y
	ConicalBarStacked	Y
	ConicalBar100PercentStacked	Y
	ConicalColumn3D	Y
Pyramid	Pyramid	Y
	PyramidStacked	Y
	Pyramid100PercentStacked	Y
	PyramidBar	Y
	PyramidBarStacked	Y
	PyramidBar100PercentStacked	Y
	PyramidColumn3D	Y
BoxWhisker	BoxWhisker	Y
Funnel	Funnel	Y
ParetoLine	ParetoLine	Y
Sunburst	Sunburst	Y
Treemap	Treemap	Y
Waterfall	Waterfall	Y
Histogram	Histogram	Y
Map	Map	N

In case you try to render the non‑supported chart types to image or PDF, you may end up with 0‑sized images or a blank PDF.