Dynamic reports with Microsoft local report engine

• Download demo project - 9 Kb
• Download source - 9 Kb

Introduction

In this article I will try to show you the magnificent functionality of the local report engine, which the Microsoft Corporation incorporated in the new version of MS Visual Studio 2005.
Every developer knows very well how important it is to have at one’s disposal a powerful, flexible and user friendly report engine.  It doesn’t matter what type of project we develop, because in 95% of all possible projects, we will need to implement some kind of report functionality. Knowing this fact, Microsoft incorporated in their new version of theMS Visual Studio v.2005 this functionality. The local reports are similar to the Microsoft Reporting Services under MS SQL 2005. A few months ago I wrote an article on  this topic. " The new reporting horizons with Microsoft Reporting Services 2005"  The best options of this local report engine are that when you make local reports you may easily switch to and convert them to "remote" reports and run them as part of the Microsoft Reporting Services engine. Another powerful functionality of the local reports is the possibility to use many data sources in a handy and flexible way. And last, but not least, all this power is free. You do not need to buy or install any additional licenses to support many users or applications. Fantastic, right?

Creating an report's dataset

Our first task is to create a dataset with all tables and relations, which will be the basis for building our report. We may skip this stage and provide directly our dataset to the report engine, but we need this dataset for our next steps. When we create and design a report, we need to see visually all available tables, their fields and data typeof the tables’ fields. This will make our life as developers easier. For the purpose of the current demo, I will create a simple dataset with only one simple table.  Please forgive me!

Creating an report

Our next step and task is to create and design for our needs of this demo two simple reports. This can be done by going to the project's folder and by right clicking of the mouse choose "Add a new item" andfrom the list menu selecting an empty report file for creating a report using Microsoft reporting technology. You have to set the name of this new report and location. In our case I will give the name "demoReport.rdlc" and location the "Rdl" folder from my demo project root folder. Also by same way we will create and the second one report. The main purpose is to create two similar reports with a few difference as graphic's types and title for an example. You may see them in subfolder "Rdl/Tamplates".Actually the generated reports from Microsoft report designer are an XML files and you may open them with Notepad. The new in this article unlike the artilce for static reports is " The new reporting horizons with Microsoft reporting technology" that we will use generated reports for tamplates. And next action is to create a new C# method which will generate on fly every time the necessary report. The diffrence is small but very important. Below, I will show you a few important things in my code. If you keep them I promise you that your life will be easier working with Microsoft reporting technology.

//
//Here is code behind Init event of report viewer 
//Initialize the report options always in "Init" event of 
//Report Viewer .............
//
protected void rptViewer_Init(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    rptViewer.ProcessingMode = ProcessingMode.Local;
    rptViewer.LocalReport.EnableExternalImages = false;
    rptViewer.LocalReport.EnableHyperlinks     = false;
    rptViewer.Visible                          = true;
    rptViewer.ShowBackButton                   = true;
    rptViewer.ShowDocumentMapButton            = true;
    rptViewer.ShowExportControls               = true;
    rptViewer.ShowFindControls                 = true;
    rptViewer.ShowParameterPrompts             = false;
    rptViewer.ShowReportBody                   = true;
    rptViewer.SizeToReportContent              = true;
    rptViewer.ShowToolBar                      = true;
    rptViewer.ShowZoomControl                  = true;
    rptViewer.DocumentMapCollapsed             = true;
}

//
//Here is code behind binding of report
//
protected void rptViewer_DataBinding(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   string fD            = fromDate.VisibleDate.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy").Trim();
   string tD            = toDate.VisibleDate.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy").Trim();
   DataTable dt         = new DataTable();
   dt                   = GetData();
   //
   // Please notice that ReportDataSet is combination
   // from name of dataset and table/tables
   // in thie dataset "dsReports_myReport" !!!
   //
   string bindDs_name                = "dsReports_myReport";
   string reportName                 = "demoReport.rdlc";
   rptViewer.LocalReport.DisplayName = "Demo Report";
   rptViewer.LocalReport.ReportPath  = "Rdl/" + reportName;
   ReportParameter from_Date         = new ReportParameter();
   ReportParameter to_Date           = new ReportParameter();
   ReportParameter filterFromDate    = new ReportParameter();
   ReportParameter filterToDate      = new ReportParameter();
   from_Date.Name                    = "pFromDate";
   to_Date.Name                      = "pToDate";
   filterFromDate.Name               = "filterFromDate";
   filterToDate.Name                 = "filterToDate";
   from_Date.Values.Add(fD);
   to_Date.Values.Add(tD);
   filterFromDate.Values.Add(fromDate.SelectedDate.ToString());
   filterToDate.Values.Add(toDate.SelectedDate.ToString());
   ReportParameter[] myReportParams  = 
    new ReportParameter[] {from_Date, to_Date, filterFromDate, filterToDate};
   rptViewer.LocalReport.SetParameters(myReportParams);
   if (dt != null)
   {
    rptViewer.LocalReport.DataSources.Clear();
    rptViewer.LocalReport.DataSources.Add(new 
              ReportDataSource(bindDs_name.Trim(), dt));
    dt.Dispose();
   }    
}

//
// Do not forget to include and next name space in using clause
//
using Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms;

Conclusion

As final words, I would like to thank you for your patience and I hope that this article will be really useful to you and will give you the right direction when you try to implement Microsoft reporting technology to build an dynamic report and compare which approach is better for you, to use local reports as you use them as static or dynamic or to use Microsoft Repoting Services. Please download the sources from this article, and take a look.