The data point labels and the legend data items can display texts that contain information obtained from the series data. The Format properties of the NSeriesLegendView and NDataLabelStyle classes accept a string that can contain formatting commands (enclosed in the < and > characters) that represent a specific data point or a calculated series value.

The data series formatting commands are specific for the different series and this topic lists only the common formatting commands. Some series have additional formatting commands like the stock series which adds <open>, <high>, <low>, and <close> formatting commands. The additional formatting commands are described in the topic dedicated to the specific series.

The valid formatting commands that are present in a format string are dynamically replaced with the corresponding formatted values. Each formatting command has a corresponding formatter object. The only exception is the <label> command which takes the data point Label property value directly.

The following code demonstrates how to use format strings:

// create a bar series
NBarSeries bar = new NBarSeries();
chart.Series.Add(bar);
bar.DataPoints.Add(new NBarDataPoint(10.0));
bar.DataPoints.Add(new NBarDataPoint(20.0));
bar.DataPoints.Add(new NBarDataPoint(30.0));
NDataLabelStyle dataLabelStyle = new NDataLabelStyle();
dataLabelStyle.Format = "The value of this data point is <value>";
bar.DataLabelStyle = dataLabelStyle;

You can control the formatting of the data series values through the formatter objects associated with the NSeries (or derived from it) object. The following table lists the commonly supported format commands and their corresponding formatters:

The following code shows how to change the formatting applied to data point values:

series.ValueFormatter = new NNumericValueFormatter("0.000");