Render reports and display them in browser embedded texteditor incl. metadata

[Felix]

Hi,

we have the following use case: we want to render reports (made by the standalone report designer, that means TRDX files) as RTF or DOCX files and display these output files in a browser embedded texteditor. So that the user can change the content of the report as he/she likes. In the main use case the reports would be predefined letters (in which the user is able to change the content).

My questions are:

1. Is it possible to export metadata into the output RTF or DOCX file? Examples for metadata would be: information about the data source (what data is displayed), used aggregate functions, inserted sub reports etc. This metadata we would like to show in the texteditor at the respective site (e.g. somehow highlighted or in a tooltip).

2. Is it possible to use the Telerik HTML Editor for this purpose?

Thanks,
Felix

[Stef]

Hello Felix,

Reports in XML format (TRDX files) can be loaded in viewer and exported from there, or exported on the server with the ReportProcessor - Exporting Report Programmatically.
In the example is used a TypeReportSource to pass the report to the ReportProcessor, where for TRDX files you can use UriReportSource or XmlReportSource. If the report template must be modified before exporting it, you can deserialize the XML and use an InstanceReportSource. For more details check Report Sources.

The way reports will be rendered and the available settings for each renderer are available in the corresponding Design Considerations for Report Rendering article and Device Information Settings article.

Adding metadata describing the report's template is not supported, instead I can suggest you to send this information beside the exported report document.

Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX RadEditor control can be used to load the exported reports in browser - RadEditor: Import from DOCX and RTF.


Please give it a try and let us know if you need any further help.

Regards,
Stef
Telerik

 

 

[Felix]

Hello Stef,

I don't understand exactely what you mean by sending metadata information beside the exported report document. Do you mean that we have to write a routine which extracts this data from the TRDX files? Or is there a possibility to use the Telerik REporting libraries for this purpose?

We have another problem, which I didn't mention in my first post: the migration of reports from our present reporting mechanism.
At the moment we already have a customized report designer, which operates completely on RTF files. The properties and the metadata of inserted data fields is thereby set as attributes in the RTF file. Do you know a possibility to convert our currently used RTF report files into TRDX files?
Without solving this problem there is no possibility for us to change our present reporting mechanism and use Telerik Reporting instead.

Regards,
Felix

[Nasko]

Hello Felix,

Since adding metadata to the reports is not supported out-of-the-box you will need to write a method which extracts the data from the TRDX files. You can use the Reporting API Reference to deserialize the TRDX file to e Report object and then use the API reference to retrieve information directly from the Report object.

As for your second question, Telerik Reporting does not support converting RTF files to TRDX reports. It is possible to write your own logic/routine to translate the RTF to a TRDX file, but this will not be a trivial task.

Regards,
Nasko
Telerik