Use WebHooks to Track Your Telerik Report Server History

With the Telerik Report Server R2 2018 (4.1.18.516) release, we introduced support for WebHooks. This blog post describes how to use them to track the history of a Telerik Report Server. The approach is demonstrated in the referred project here - called WebHooks.

The project main building blocks are:

• CustomWebHookHandler, implemented according to the Receive Webhooks article. The functionality in this class updates the content of JSON files (one for each WebHooks Filter) tracking the Report Server history.

• NotificationsController, the WebApi controller that defines the end points to expose the data from the JSON files with the history records.

• HomeController is an MVC controller returning a View with the HTML5 ReportViewer that displays the report WebHooksReport.trdp with the Report Server history.

• ReportsController defines the Telerik Reporting REST Service that generates the report. May be removed if the report WebHooksReport.trdp will be hosted in the Report Server.

• Reports folder contains the report - WebHooksReport.trdp and the JSON files with the history records. The report displays five Tables, one for each WebHooks Filter. Each Table is bound to a WebServiceDataSource linked to the corresponding end point of the NotificationsController. The Report has three visible report parameters the end-user may use to filter the report. Two of them are DateTime (ReceivedAfter and ReceivedBefore) and filter the WebHooks based on the date/time they have been received. The third parameter that can be controlled by the user is NotificationType and allows filtering by the actions that invoked notification. The available action types are listed in an embedded CsvDataSource. There is also one hidden parameter, which value is passed from the viewer and specifies the URL of the Web Service feeding the report with data. Note that the data is filtered on the data source level through JSONPath. Here is the relevant WebServiceDataSource setup page (click the image to enlarge):

The basic idea is a modification in the Report Server content (e.g. uploading a Report, creating a Scheduled Task, editing a Data Alert, etc. - check Webhooks Management for the supported Filters) to trigger functionality in a subscriber web application (the "listener") that will update the Report Server history records. The "listener" waits until the Report Server notifies for particular modifications and logs them in JSON files.

The data in these files are exposed through a WebApi controller (NotificationsController in the example). The latter is used by WebServiceDataSources to feed the report Tables where the details about the modifications are shown. The Report (WebHooksReport.trdp in the example) itself may be hosted in the Report Server. If so, you may remove the ReportsController from the sample project and set the HTML5 Viewer’s reportServer property according to your Report Server settings.