Automatically print report from Remote Report Engine in Winforms

[Hein]

I've implemented the Telerik Reporting engine in a remote ASP.NET Core Web API by following this article. The implementation works as expected - I'm able to retrieve my report template, bind it to data & have a WinForms ReportViewer control render it on the client-side application.

I now wish to implement the ability to automatically print the reports without having to display a UI to users. Ideally we want them to click a button in the application (not from a ReportViewer toolbar) & have the report sent immediately to the printer. We will have the necessary settings available programmatically to configure the printer.

I'm aware of the ReportProcessor.PrintReport() method, which will allow me to do this. What I'm having trouble with is how to configure a ReportSource object that will be passed as the first parameter to PrintReport() that will allow it to request the report from my remote report endpoint. When displaying these reports in the ReportViewer control, a connection string is configured for the remote report server, but I can find no similar concept of any of the ReportSource objects. The closest I could get was by using UriReportSource, but I'm unsure what to set the Uri property to.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

[Todor]

Hi Hein,

The ReportProcessor is the class where the Reporting engine is defined, and by using the PrintReport method you will have to make sure the logic that utilizes the class is able to access the report definition, for example, the TRDP file. You will need to pass this TRDP file path in a UriReportSource to the printing method. With this printing, the report is actually rendered in an Image format and sent to the printer. With this approach, you don't need the REST Service as the Reporting engine that runs there is not actually used. Neither there is an endpoint of the REST Service Web API  that will provide the report definition.

If you need the REST Service, e.g. to display reports to the clients in a viewer and to have also the described printing functionality, you may use the REST Service Web API to get a ready document, for example in PDF format, and print it in your Win Forms application. Generally, you will have to:

• Register a Client
• Create Report Instance
• Create Report Document
• Perform Get Document Info requests, for example, in a loop, and when it returns True for 'documentReady', to Get the Document as a byte array

When you have the document locally you may print it with custom logic.

The Report Viewer uses the same API when previewing a document - you may use Fiddler to check the exact requests to and the responses from the service. 

Regards,
Todor
Progress Telerik

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[Hein]

Hi Todor,

Thank you for the detailed feedback. From your post pointing out that the Reporting engine is contained in the ReportProcessor, I realized I was attempting to use the templates wrong. After some changes, I got it to work the way I wanted to. My approach was:

• Created a custom endpoint to return templates as XML (TRDX)
• Create a XmlReportSource on the client-side
• Pass this XmlReportSource to either the viewer or ReportProcessor.PrintReport() method, depending on the requirement

This worked like a charm. Thanks for explaining how the various bits come together!