Three Days with Google Chart API and .NET 2.0: A Love-Hate Story
I just spent three full days wrestling with the Google Chart API inside a .NET 2.0 web app. What I learned? I have to share — keeping this to myself would be a digital crime. Here’s the hard truth: Google Chart API and .NET 2.0 don’t play nice together. Why? Because .NET 2.0 has zero built-in JSON support , and the Google Chart API lives on JSON. You can probably hack something together with custom parsers or third-party libraries — but if you're on a deadline (like I was), that’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to fall into. But I didn’t walk away empty-handed. The Workaround That Saved Me If you’re stuck maintaining a legacy .NET 2.0 app and need Google Charts today , here’s the least painful path : Pre-render chart URLs server-side using query strings. Yes — old-school, but 100% compatible. Instead of sending JSON payloads, construct the full chart URL manually using the [Image Chart API (deprecated but still functional)](https://developers.go...
