How to use FastReport Open Source in .Net WinForms applications. Part 1.

The open source FastReport report generator is initially positioned for web applications based on the ASP .Net Core framework. However, it is worth remembering that it is based on the FastReport.Core report generator, and at the heart of that is FastReport.Net. This means that despite its focus on the web, it can still be used in other types of .Net applications, for example, in WPF or WinForms.

The purpose of this article is to show you how to use FastReport Open Source in a .Net Windows Forms application using the example of creating a custom report viewer. So, the double benefit is to learn how to use and create the necessary report viewer application.

Let's formulate the requirements for our application. The report prospector should allow:

Download and display a prepared report;
Select a report from the list and display it;
Move to the next page of the report;
Move (hereinafter to display) on the previous page of the report;
Go to the first page of the report;
Move to the last page of the report;
Set the page number of the report in the text box and go to this page;
Zooming in the report;
Zooming out the report.

Since FR Open Source does not have a visual component for displaying a report in WinFroms applications, we will display the report in the form of pictures. For this, you first need to export the report to an image.

Create a WinForms application. Add the FastReport.Opensource library to the project using the NuGet package manager. Select the nuget.org repository and find the package we need. And install it.

Create a form according to the requirements for the application:

The toolStrip control is located at the top of the form. There are buttons on it: open, first page, previous page, next page, last page, zoom in, zoom out. Also, there is a text box for entering the page number.

The list of reports is located on the left below. Selecting the list items, we get the corresponding report in the central area of the form. Using the “Open” button, we can open the file open dialog box, load the file in fpx format (previously prepared report) and display the report.

In the center of the form there is a panel which is the PictireBox object. Set the AutoScroll property to true for the panel to scroll through reports when scaling.

Let's first implement the report download function in fpx format. Create an event handler for clicking the "Open" button:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Data;

using System.Drawing;

using System.IO;

using System.Linq;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using FastReport;

using FastReport.Export.Image;

using FastReport.Utils;

private Report report = new Report();

public Report Report

{

get

{

return report;

}

set

{

report = value;

}

private void toolStripOpnBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

using (OpenFileDialog dialog = new OpenFileDialog())

{

dialog.Filter = "Prapared reprt(*.fpx)|*.fpx";

dialog.Multiselect = false;

if (dialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)

{

Report.LoadPrepared(dialog.FileName);

ReportExport();

ShowReport();

}

Previously, we created the report object and the Report property to get and set the value of the report object. In the event handlers for the button click, we create a dialog box for opening a file, set up filtering of files in the file by the .fpx extension. We use the LoadPrepared method to load a report in fpx format into the Report object. Then we call the method that exports the report to the image. We implement it below. And finally, we call the report display method, which we have not yet implemented.

Create an export object:

public ImageExport exp = new ImageExport(); // Create report export in image format

Create a variable to store the current page number:

public int CurrentPage = 0;

Create a list of report pages into which we will load the resulting image export:

public List<Image> pages = new List<Image>();

Now let's implement the report export method.

public void ReportExport()

{

DeleteTempFiles();

exp.ImageFormat = ImageExportFormat.Png; // Set the image format png

exp.Export(Report, Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() + "/" + System.Guid.NewGuid() + ".png"); // Export report to file

foreach (string fileName in exp.GeneratedFiles)

{

using (var img = File.OpenRead(fileName))

{

pages.Add(Image.FromStream(img));

}

CurrentPage = 0;

}

We will implement the DeleteTempFiles () method a bit later. Do not pay much attention to it now.

First, set the export format - png. Then we export the report. You can specify the fixed name of the resulting file, or use the name generator, as it is shown in the example. The resulting files are exported in a loop and added to the list of report pages. As you noticed, we use the stream to add an image to the list of pages. This is done in order not to block image files. When we want to implement the method of cleaning unnecessary images, we will encounter a blocked file. Using the stream for reading, we avoid this problem. After exporting and saving report pages, set the current report page to 0, in case you switched pages when viewing the previous report.

Implement the report display method:

public void ShowReport()

{

if (CurrentPage >= 0 && CurrentPage < pages.Count)

pictureBox1.Image = pages[CurrentPage]; //Set the image

toolStripPageNum.Text = (CurrentPage + 1).ToString();

}

At the beginning, we check if the value of the current page is out of bounds 0 and we also check the number of pages in the report. Next, set the image - the current page from the list of pages. In the last line, we display the number of the current page in the text box on the toolbar.

Now we can start the application and try to open the previously prepared report: