Reporting — Enhancements, Documentation Updates, New Video Tutorials, Tips & Tricks (July 2022)

This post documents recent enhancements made to DevExpress Reports, links to updated help topics, summaries of new video tutorials, and links to a handful of support tickets that might be of value to those using our reporting product line.

As always, should you have any questions about DevExpress Reports, feel free to submit a support ticket via the DevExpress Support Center.

A Few Recent Enhancements

We refactored our web client libraries and removed a number of circular dependencies. This change helped reduce the size of bundled libraries and allowed us to introduce Vite support. For more information on Vite, please refer to the following blog post: Reporting — Create a Vite-Powered Web App.

You can now resize Expression Editor and Filter Editor windows within the DevExpress Web Report Designer.

We also extended the capabilities of the Expression Editor with a FormatString function - available for query parameters of report data sources:

As you might already know, our Web Report Designer allows you to create federated queries. New Edit and Remove buttons are displayed next to each federated query in the Field List. These buttons allow you to modify a query via the Query Builder or remove it directly within the panel.

The DevExpress Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET includes a new Inherited Report item — allowing you to subclass your existing reports (v22.1):

Documentation Updates

• We updated the help topics in the Group and Sort documentation section. The topics now illustrate real-world tasks with step-by-step report creation and updated screenshots.

• We updated the description of the DataSourceManagerclass. Specifically, we described how to use class methods to manage data sources at runtime (add, get, modify, and more). We also documented the use of class methods in applications that target WinForms, WPF, and ASP.NET Core platforms.

New Video Tutorials

We published three new video tutorials on the DevExpress YouTube channel:

• Reporting — Using Custom Functions
• Reporting — Combining a Federation Data Source with a Different Type of Database Inside of a Report
• Reporting —  Filter Report Data on the Database Level Dynamically Using Parameterized Queries

Interesting Tickets

Multiple Supported Platforms

• XRCrossTab - How to show row numbers
  If XRCrossTab has one group level, create an extra cell and assign the [Arguments.GroupRowIndex] expression to the cell's Text property. This modification will allow you to display the index of the current group (and hence, the index of the current row).
• The 'Cannot find the following connection in the config file' exception in a .NET 5 console application
  By default, the appsettings.json file is not copied to application output in desktop and console applications. As such, a data source fails to load connections from this file at runtime. Enable the Copy to output directory property for the appsettings.json file to address this issue.

• XRRichText - How to center RTF text in table cells
• XRLabel - How to implement custom word wrap logic

Reporting for WinForms

• Document Viewer - Change the default 'null' ('none') text for a report parameter
  Handle a report's ParametersRequestBeforeShow event and modify the parameter editor's NullValuePrompt property:
  

  private void XtraReport1_ParametersRequestBeforeShow(object sender, ParametersRequestEventArgs e) {
      e.ParametersInformation[0].Editor.Properties.NullValuePrompt = "No Value";
  }

• Report Designer - A report's Localization property is reset to (Default) on application startup
• Report Designer - How to display a selected control's expression in the status bar

Reporting for WPF

• Report Designer - How to detect and handle changes in an XtraReport object
  To detect whether a document was changed since it was last opened, you can use the HasChanges property. DevExpress Reports also includes a ReportDesignerDocument.CanSaveChanged event that can indicate whether the document was changed.
• Document Preview Control - How to preview reports and subreports from a custom storage (IReportStorage)

Reporting for ASP.NET Core

• Document Viewer - How to display 'From Date' and 'To Date' captions above DateRange parameter calendars
  You can customize the dxrv-daterange-calendar calendar template and display a custom caption message as needed. Use $data.min to determine whether the calendar is set to the From or To date.
  
• Web Report Designer - How to use custom fonts under Linux environment

Reporting for Blazor

• .NET 6 WASM application with DevExpress Reporting components
• How to print a report directly on the client side
• DXReportViewer - Display the Toolbar at the bottom

Reporting for Web Forms

• Document Viewer - How to hide the following message: "The browser sent the document to the printer..."
  Set the WebDocumentViewerExportSettings.ShowPrintNotificationDialog property to false.
  
• Document Viewer - How to change the background color of highlighted editing fields

And the last interesting ticket that applies to all Web platforms:

• Document Viewer - How to export only selected checkboxes from a report document
  First, call the DisableCachedDocumentSource method to disable document caching for the Web Document Viewer (note that this modification can decrease viewer performance when you preview large documents). Once complete, handle the EditingFieldChanged event to find checkboxes that should be exported to the document.

Your Feedback Matters

As usual, we appreciate your feedback. Please tell us what you think of our recent enhancements, documentation updates, and new video tutorials.