Column Chart with Fill Function

When you have a column chart, sometimes you want to change the column colors based on the data. A question in the Flex Forum asked how to alter the column color on each column. To do this, yo need to use the fillFunction on a ColumnSeries to set the color of the fill. One issue with doing this, is how it affects the chart legend.

If you use the fills property or the fillFunction to define the fills of chart items, and you want a legend, you must manually create the Legend object for that chart.

But, this just gives me the opportunity to test out two different charting options.

I alter the stacked column chart that I created to answer another question on the forum. Since the column chart in this example is created dynamically, I had to add the fillFunction parameter when creating the column series for the green and red apple columns.

columnSeries1.fillFunction = greenAppleFillFunction;

Then I just created a simple function to change the color of the column if the count was less than 50.

private function greenAppleFillFunction(element:ChartItem, index:Number):IFill {
	var item:ColumnSeriesItem = ColumnSeriesItem(element);
	var count:Number = Number(item.yValue);

	if (count < 50) {
		return scFadeGreen;
	} else {
		return scGreen;,
	}
}

To make things easier, I had already defined my SolidColor values, this makes it easier to keep it consistent throughout the chart. In this example, I am only getting the yValue, but you could also get the xValue, if you wanted to change the column colors based on that.

Next I need to update the legend to reflect the new fillFunctions, which is fairly straight forward and I can also use the defined SolidColor parameters.

<mx:Legend  direction="horizontal" >
	<mx:LegendItem label="Red Apples" fill="{scRed}" />
	<mx:LegendItem label="Red under 50" fill="{scFadeRed}" />
	<mx:LegendItem label="Yellow Apples" fill="{scYellow}" />
	<mx:LegendItem label="Green Apples" fill="{scGreen}" />
	<mx:LegendItem label="Green under 50" fill="{scFadeGreen}" />
</mx:Legend>

I also added a Refresh Data button so that the data can be cycled and the column color changes can be seen.
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About DeanLogic
Dean has been playing around with programming ever since his family got an IBM PC back in the early 80's. Things have changed since BASICA and Dean has dabbled in HTML, JavaScript, Action Script, Flex, Flash, PHP, C#, C++, J2ME and SQL. On this site Dean likes to share his adventures in coding. And since programming isn't enough of a time killer, Dean has also picked up the hobby of short film creation.

About DeanLogic

Dean has been playing around with programming ever since his family got an IBM PC back in the early 80's. Things have changed since BASICA and Dean has dabbled in HTML, JavaScript, Action Script, Flex, Flash, PHP, C#, C++, J2ME and SQL. On this site Dean likes to share his adventures in coding. And since programming isn't enough of a time killer, Dean has also picked up the hobby of short film creation.

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