In-Place Reports
- 3 minutes to read
The Reports V2 module allows you to design reports for a filtered Reports V2 data source (see Data Filtering in Reports V2). In some scenarios, you may need to preview a report for a certain object or a set of objects that are not related by criteria. For example, the Invoice business object(s) should be able to be printed in a specific manner. In this case, a specially designed report should be available for display for a particular set of Invoice objects. For this purpose, use the Inplace Reporting feature provided by the Reports V2 module. This topic demonstrates how to use this feature.
To show selected object(s) in a specified report, the Reports V2 module introduces the ShowInReport Action. This Action represents the SingleChoiceAction class instance. Its items represent so-called inplace reports that are designed for the current View’s object type.
WinForms
ASP.NET Web Forms
Blazor
When executing this Action, the selected report is shown in the Preview window. The report presents the object(s) selected in the current Detail View or List View. To render it, XAF changes the DataSourceBase.Criteria property of the report’s Data Source according to the items selected.
WinForms
ASP.NET Web Forms
Blazor
The ShowInReport Action is contained in PrintSelectionBaseController. This Controller collects the in-place reports that are appropriate for the current object type, and creates corresponding items for the Action. When there are no appropriate in-place reports for the current object type, the ShowInReport Action is not activated. Inherit from this controller or use its events when implementing a custom functionality. This controller has no platform-specific descendants.
In-place reports represent common reports that can be created in an XAF application. To make a report in-place, you should set the ReportData.IsInplaceReport property to true. (By default, this property is set to false.) To specify this property, invoke a Detail View for the required report. To do this, use the EditReportController.Edit Action in the WinForms or ASP.NET Core Blazor application.
In ASP.NET Web Forms applications, you cannot invoke a Detail View for a report because of the Reports V2 architecture. It is presumed that end-users can design and edit reports in WinForms applications only. In ASP.NET Web Forms applications, they can only view and save them.
Note
- The ShowInReport Action is disabled if there are unsaved changes. You need to commit changes to preview a report.
- The ShowInReport Action uses the in-place reports cache to generate and store the Action’s items. Note that this cache is not updated automatically. Refer to the InplaceReportsCacheHelper class description for information on how to update this cache manually.
The Application Model‘s IModelNavigationItemsForReports.GenerateRelatedReportsGroup property specifies whether or not context navigation is enabled for the Reports V2 module. When this property is set to true, the Reports V2 module adds navigation items for the items corresponding to business classes participating in existing in-place reports. Each added item represents an in-place report. For additional information on context navigation, refer to the Navigation System help topic.
You can disable the Inplace Reports feature. To do this, use one of the following techniques:
In code:
Before an XafApplication object is created, set the static ReportsModule.DefaultEnableInplaceReports property to false.In the Application Designer (.NET Framework projects only):
Select the Reports V2 module in the Modules section, and set the EnableInplaceReports property to false in the Properties window.
To create a predefined in-place report, use the PredefinedReportsUpdater.AddPredefinedReport method overload that takes the isInplaceReport parameter.