KendoUI for jQuery - Chart dataBound event does not work - kendo-ui

Question

Here's a simplified example of my data:
[{"Name": "Bob", "Count":3}, {"Name": "Steve", "Count":5}]
What I want is a chart title of: Total FOO: 8. So the title must be based on the data. The data is AJAX and this is an ASP.NET MVC application.
In my CSHTML I have:
.DataSource(ds => ds.Read(read => read.Action("MeMethodName", "MyControllerName")))
.Events(events => events.DataBound("setChartTitle('chartName', 'Total FOO')"))
Here's the crazy hack I had to do:
function setChartTitle(name, title) {
let chart = $("#" + name).data("kendoChart");
if (chart) {
let ds = chart.dataSource;
let total = 0;
for (let i = 0; i < ds.data().length; i++) {
total += ds.data()[i].Count;
}
chart.options.title.text = title + ": " + total;
chart.refresh();
} else if (arguments.length < 3) {
// Data source was not found and this was initiated through Kendo. Wait and try again but only once
setTimeout(function () {
sumEntityCount(name, title, "stop");
}, 500);
}
}
This is really bad.
Accessing the kendoChart returns undefined, yet the chart itself called this. This is why I need to check if (chart) above.
This leads to a hacky ELSE block I added where I can call this again with a 500 ms delay. This alone is a bug as 500ms is a random number and may not be enough. I can't ship like this.
To prevent recursion I call the same function with a different parameter.
If the values are found, then I can't just set the chart options. I need to call refresh which redraws everything.
Questions:
Why is the kendoChart data undefined initially? Why has Telerik called dataBound when there's nothing there?!
Isn't there a dataBinding event? I don't want to do this after the fact nor do I want to refresh the whole thing.

Answer 1

The chart itself is passed in when you declare a basic function without calling it:
.events(events => events.Render("someFunction"))
Then declare your function:
function someFunction(sender) {
// sender.chart is what I want
}
But you cannot pass any arguments here. Which means I can't use it.
The hack is to do the following:
.Events(events => events.Render("function(sender) { someFunction(sender, 'param1', 'param2', 'param3'); }"))
This gives it an actual function instead of calling a function. Kendo passes in the sender as expected and you can pass it along with new parameters to your JavaScript.
I also switched to using Render instead of DataBound.