Reporting — Enhancements, Documentation Updates, Tips & Tricks (October 2022)

This post documents recent changes made to help topics, and links to a handful of support tickets that might be of value to those using and/or considering DevExpress Reports for an upcoming project.

New Examples and Documentation Updates

• The following topic describes how you can use our Rich Text Editor in a React-powered web reporting Application: Reporting for React - Enable the Rich Text Editor
• We reorganized and updated help topics in our Create a Report from A to Z documentation section. The section now includes updated first-time experience tutorials and thorough introductory content.

We also updated the following help topics:

• Create an Invoice
• Export to PPT
• Use Query Parameters
• Create an Angular Front-End Application with a Report Designer
• Create an Angular Application with a Report Designer From Template
• Create an Angular Front-End Application with a Document Viewer
• Bind a Report to an Object Data Source
• Microsoft Azure Reporting

The following topics now contain updated code examples:

• Export to PDF
• Create Editors for Custom Parameter Types in an ASP.NET Core Application
• Create Editors for Custom Parameter Types in an ASP.NET MVC Application

Enhancements

Because of images used within a report, large reports on Linux OS consume more memory when compared to Windows. Even when images are duplicated, each image is stored in memory as a separate instance. To address this issue, we introduced a new PageCacheSize property for CachedReportSource and CachedDocumentSource classes. This property allows you to enlarge the image cache size and reduce memory consumption. Set this property to a small value (2-5) if your report page contains multiple images.

public class CustomViewerOperationLogger : WebDocumentViewerOperationLogger { 
  public override void CachedDocumentSourceSerializing(string documentId, CachedDocumentSource cachedDocumentSource, 
  GeneratedDocumentDetails documentDetails, DocumentStorage documentStorage, 
  PrintingSystemBase printingSystemSource) { 
    cachedDocumentSource.PageCacheSize = 5; 
  } 

  public override void CachedDocumentSourceDeserialized(string documentId, CachedDocumentSource cachedDocumentSource, 
  GeneratedDocumentDetails documentDetails, DocumentStorage documentStorage) { 
    cachedDocumentSource.PageCacheSize = 5; 
  } 
}

Interesting Support Tickets

All Platforms

1. T1070290 - How to disable an extra character in a barcode string
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1070290
2. T1070781 - How to specify the summary used for a TimeSpan column
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1070781

3. T1066200 - How to use an Expression Editor to remove the first character from label text
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1066200

   You can use the `Remove(String, StartPosition, Length)` string function in a label's text expression as follows:

   Remove([ReportItems.label1].[Text], 0, 1)

Reporting for WinForms

1. T1060687 - How to set an active report in a multi-tab report designer
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1060687

   Use the XRDesignMdiController.XtraTabbedMdiManager property to receive an XtraTabbedMdiManager instance, and call the ActivateDocument method to activate the opened pane, as shown below:

   XRTabbedMdiManager manager = _controller.XtraTabbedMdiManager as XRTabbedMdiManager; 
   
   // Activate first opened report 
   manager.View.ActivateDocument((Control)manager.View.Documents[0].Form); 

2. T1060695 - How to register a custom parameter type for a new report
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1060695

Reporting for ASP.NET Core

1. T1084780 - How to select the first item as the default value in a Parameter drop-down list
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1084780

   The ParametersInitialized event allows you to populate parameter editors with custom parameter values. In the event handler, obtain the first item from the list in the lookupValues collection, and pass this value to the ActualParametersInfo.value function.

   <script> 
       function onParameterInitialized(s,e){ 
           var p1 = e.ActualParametersInfo 
           .filter(x => x.parameterDescriptor.name == "parameter1")[0]; 
           p1.value(p1.lookUpValues()[0]); 
           p1 && e.Submit(); 
       } 
   </script> 
   
   @{ 
       var viewerRender = Html.DevExpress().WebDocumentViewer("DocumentViewer") 
           .Height("1000px") 
           .ClientSideEvents(c => c.ParametersInitialized("onParameterInitialized")) 
           .Bind("TestReport"); 
       @viewerRender.RenderHtml() 
           }

2. T1058602 - How to build a Linux Alpine image for a DevExpress-powered reporting application
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1058602
3. T1057147 - How to localize export option labels
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1057147

4. T1065539 - How to auto-save a report after each change
   https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/T1065539

   To save a report each time it receives changes, handle the ReportOpened event and use the GetCurrentTab method to get the current designer tab. Subscribe to the current designer tab's isModified property to track when a report or its element are changed. When a function hits, call the client-side SaveReport method to save the current report. Call ResetIsModified to clear the current report tab's modification flag.

   function onReportOpened(s,e){ 
          var isSaving = false; 
          s.GetCurrentTab().isModified.subscribe(function(newVal){ 
              if(newVal && !isSaving){ 
                console.log("Report was saved"); 
                reportDesigner.SaveReport().done(() => {
                       isSaving = true; 
                       reportDesigner.ResetIsModified(); 
                   isSaving = false; 
                 }); 
              } 
          }); 
       }