How to: Preview, Export and Print a Remotely Created Document

• Jan 23, 2019
• 3 minutes to read

This tutorial illustrates how to use DocumentViewer to publish a document that is generated remotely by the DevExpress Report Server or the WCF report service.

To provide a Windows Forms application with print preview functionality for remotely generated documents, do the following.

• Create a Windows Forms Application
• Publish a Document Generated by a WCF Report Service
• Publish a Document Generated by a DevExpress Report Server
• Launch the Application and View the Result
• Limitations

Create a Windows Forms Application

To get started with this tutorial, create a Windows Forms Application with a print preview, similar to the one created in the following tutorial: How to: Add a Print Preview to a Windows Forms Application.

Publish a Document Generated by a WCF Report Service

This section of the document describes how to publish a document generated by a report service. To learn how to host a report service on a server-side application, refer to the Report Service topic.

The following steps are required to publish a document provided by a WCF report service.

1. Click the DocumentViewer control’s smart tag. In the invoked actions list, expand the Document Source drop-down menu. Expand the Standard Sources node in the invoked menu and select RemoteDocumentSource. The Remote Document Source wizard will be invoked.

   

2. In the first step of the invoked wizard, select Report Service and click Next.

   

3. In the next step, specify the URI for the report service hosted by the server-side application, as well as the name of the remote report you wish to display in the document viewer. Click Finish to exit the wizard.

   

Publish a Document Generated by a DevExpress Report Server

The following steps are required to publish a document provided by a DevExpress Report Server.

1. Click the DocumentViewer control’s smart tag. In the invoked actions list, expand the Document Source drop-down menu. Expand the Standard Sources node in the invoked menu and select RemoteDocumentSource. The Remote Document Source wizard will be invoked.

   

2. In the first step of the invoked wizard, select Report Server and click Next.

   

3. In the next step, specify the report server address and choose the authentication type.

   

   If you selected the Report Server Authentication option, you need to specify the user credentials as well. The credentials specified are used by the wizard to obtain the information required in later steps. At runtime, an end-user will be prompted for credentials before a document is obtained from the server.

   Click Next to proceed to the next wizard step.

4. In the following step, select a report to display in the Document Viewer from the list of available reports and click Next.

   

5. Specify a name for the newly added endpoint and click Finish to exit the wizard.

   

Launch the Application and View the Result

The client-side print preview is now capable of obtaining documents created on the application’s server side.

To preview the document, run the application. Use the ribbon menu options to print and/or export the document.

Limitations

When the Document Preview shows remotely created documents, it does not provide the following capabilities:

• Change document page settings in the Page Setup dialog;
• Scale the document content;
• Display thumbnails;
• Use editing fields;
• Search for a specific text using the Search panel;
• Add watermarks.