Handling chart generated images using Chart Http Handler

  • Article

When the Chart.RenderType property is set to ImageTag, the Chart control is rendered as standard image (img) tag. Displaying an image in current web browsers is a two stage process: first the browser renders the html page and then downloads the image from specified Url. Because real chart image is created during web page processing the Chart needs a storage where image will stay until the browser requests it.

You can specify how the Chart control manages the image files. To do this, use the ImageStorageMode property. By default, the ImageStorageMode property is set to UseHttpHandler. This causes the Chart control to use the ChartHttpHandler that is registered in the web.config file to manage the rendered chart images.

Use the chart HTTP handler to:

  • Prevent file override collisions in a server cluster or a multiple-process site.
  • Protect the security of rendered chart images by preventing users from downloading chart images that are rendered for other users.
  • Reduce disk operations by storing image files in memory or other storage methods, such as SQL Server.

When you drag a Chart control from the Toolbox onto the design surface of the ASP.NET page, the ChartHttpHandler is automatically registered in the web.config file as "ChartImageHandler". You can configure ChartImageHandler's behavior in the <appSettings> element. The applicable code section is provided below with the automatically generated settings:

<appSettings>     ``<add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:\TempImageFiles\;" />``</appSettings>

Use the parameters in the value attribute to configure the chart HTTP handler. See the table below for a description for each parameter.

 

Parameter Description
storage

Storage mode. Three options are available:

  • file: Store the rendered chart images as temporary files. You must also specify the storage location in the url or dir parameter. In a server cluster or a multiple-process site, you must specify the dir parameter.

  • memory: Store the rendered chart images in the memory space of the running process. Do not use this option in a server cluster or a multiple-process site.

  • session: Store the rendered chart images in a session variable.
url

The relative URL of the image storage location. If the dir parameter is specified, it is used instead of url. The default value is "~/".
dir Absolute directory path of the image storage location. This can be either a local path or network path. In a server cluster environment, use a network path to keep the temporary files in a shared location. Each temporary file is assigned with a unique machine ID to prevent the files from being overridden inappropriately.
timeout

The timeout period in seconds for rendered chart images. After this period has elapsed for an image, it may be replaced by a newer image. The default value is 30.
handler A custom IChartStorageHandler implementation. The value should be formatted as a fully qualified assembly name. For example: MyNamespace.MyClass.MyHandler.
privateImages

Privacy protection. When set to true, the generated image can only be downloaded by its owner if some of the following types of identifications are enforced:

  • The user is authenticated.
  • AnonymousID is enabled.
  • SessionID is available.

The default value is true.
deleteAfterServicing

Whether the image should be deleted after successful download from a client. The default value is true.
webDevServerUseConfigSettings

Whether to store rendered chart images in memory when running the application in full trust level using the Visual Studio development server.

The default value is true. This may mean that your settings in the web.config file have no effect when you run the ASP.NET application from Visual Studio.

  

Different trust levels have impact on ChartHttpHandler behavior. The following is a list of trust levels and how the trust levels affect the configuration settings in the web.config file.

  • Full trust: All configuration variations apply.

  • High trust: The ASP.NET Development Server cannot be detected. Therefore, webDevServerUseConfigSettings has no effect.

  • Medium trust: Same as high trust.

  • Low trust: Same as high trust, except that file access is forbidden. The storage parameter must be set to session or memory.

  • Minimal trust: Same as low trust, except that the chart HTTP handler detection fails. This means that the ChartImageHandler key in your web.config file is mandatory.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 12, 2009
    Delian Tchoparinov just posted on his blog about chart image rendering using Chart HTTP Handlers. This

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2010
    mb35412 your iis versions are different on production and test boxes. aspnet_wp is the worker process for iis 5.1 where w3wp is for iis 6 and maybe 7. i think i saw some configuration you need to apply to make it work on different versions of iis.

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2010
    I have implemented custom IChartStorageHandler to control temporary location for image files depending on environment (production, testing, development). How do I ensure that names on temporary image files will not conflict on  a web farm ? It looks like if you use custom IChartStorageHandler and ImageStorageMode="UseHttpHandler", name generation settings in "ImageLocation" attribute are ignored.

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2010
    Use session :/ Configure it on the load balanced stuff

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2010
    Hi Rakshun Can you please elaborate on your comment "Configure it on the load balanced stuff". My web servers are on a load balanced environment and i am not sure what is the best way to specify "ChartImageHandler". Thank you Kiran

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2010
    Try this in your web.config file: <appSettings> <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=session;timeout=20;" /> OR <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=memory;timeout=20;" /> </appSettings> Sands

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2010
    Hi all, We have used Chart control in our web application and worked fine. Now we wanted to publish website to Windows Azure cloud environment. There these Chart contrls are giving out of memory exception. Can anybody please give suggessions/Solution?

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2010
    Well, I wanted to give some context of the problem. We are using .net3.5 framework , the ChartImageHandler section in web.config  is <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=session;timeout=20;" />

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2011
    Hi, I want to do a Jquery POST and get a chart using renderControl (which will return HTML attributes) I have successfully done this on WEbforms, However the same with MVC give a empty image. The handler doesn't perform the same in MVC2 3.5. I went near to 50 sites now. No solutions could resolve this. I can't use base64encoding as IE6, 7 don't support it. What I'm trying to do? I have few data parameteres to be sent (POST) to server and in response get the Chart image as <img> tag along with other attributes I will also append OTHER data all this to be done using JQUERY. No postbacks to be used.

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2011
    skeezmoe, You probably got your problem resolved but your dir attribute should be something like this dir=~/Images/Chart or you need to specify a full path. -sPidy

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2012
    Removing "dir" solved my issue with missing folder. It doesn't seem to be mandatory.    <!--<add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:TempImageFiles;"/>-->    <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;" />

  • Anonymous
    June 27, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2014
    Hi, i m developing an application which shows reports as bar chart using the chart control..now i want to email the report...the charts appear on composed mail but the received mail doesn't contain the chart image...any help..thanks in advance... <appSettings>    <add key="ValidationSettings:UnobtrusiveValidationMode" value="None" />    <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:TempImageFiles;" />  </appSettings>

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2014
    Hi,i got the solution ...i just needed to set deleteAfterServicing=false;