145 Chapter 4: Displaying Data and Labels Adobe® Flex® provides some techniques for displaying data and labels in your charts. Topics Working with axes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 About the CategoryAxis class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 About the NumericAxis class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Adding axis titles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Defining axis labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Using data labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Using DataTip objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Using per-item fills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Using the minField property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Stacking charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Using Legend controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Working with axes Each chart, except for a pie chart, has horizontal and vertical axes. There are two axis types: category and numeric. A category axis typically defines strings that represent groupings of items in the chart; for example, types of expenses (such as rent, utilities, and insurance) or names of employees. A numeric axis typically defines continuous data such as the amount of an expense or the productivity gains of the employee. These data define the height of a column, for example. Numeric axes include the LinearAxis, LogAxis, and DateTimeAxis. You work with the axes objects to define their appearance, but also to define what data is displayed in the chart. The following sections describe the CategoryAxis and NumericAxis classes. About the CategoryAxis class The CategoryAxis class maps discrete categorical data (such as states, product names, or department names) to an axis and spaces them evenly along it. This axis accepts any data type that can be represented by a String. The dataProvider property of the CategoryAxis object defines the data provider that contains the text for the labels. In most cases, this can be the same data provider as the chart's data provider. A CategoryAxis object used in a chart inherits its dataProvider property from the containing chart, so you are not required to explicitly set the dataProvider property on a CategoryAxis object. The dataProvider property of a CategoryAxis object can contain an Array of labels or an Array of objects. If the data provider contains objects, you use the categoryField property to point to the field in the data provider that contains the labels for the axis, as the following example shows: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!-- charts/BasicColumn.mxml --> <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">