What's New in ActiveReports.NET v15.2

GrapeCity is pleased to announce the release of ActiveReports 15.2, the second service pack of ActiveReports 15. This update is FREE for all ActiveReports 15 license holders.

If you don't yet have an ActiveReports 15 license, you can download the latest version today. To take a look at the list of reported bug fixes, please visit the Forums page.

Download Now!

In addition to the fixes mentioned, this release also comes with some requested features:

• New TXT export for page/RDL reports
• Report Explorer customization in the Desktop End-User Report Designer
• Localizing Page/RDL charts at runtime
• Web Report Designer events

New TXT Export for Printing Tabular Reports to an ASCII Printer

We have implemented a new "Tabular Text" export format for Page and RDL reports. Imagine you have a sales report of your products as such:

If you wanted to print this to a dot matrix printer, you would normally get an output such as:

This process removes the spacing and tabular look of the report. To maintain the proper spacing and tabular view, use the new Tabular Text export so that when you print to your ASCII printer, it appears as:

Desktop End-User Report Designer Customization

While you have always been able to customize ActiveReports' End-User Report designers, in this release, we have simplified the process of controlling the ability to add data sources, datasets, and parameters in the Desktop End-User Report Designer.

We have added an "EnabledNodes" property to the Report Explorer component to control the ability of an end-user to add new data sources, datasets, or parameters. By default, this property is set to "all", which allows users to create new connections and parameters:

reportExplorer.EnabledNodes = ReportExplorerEnabledNodes.All

To disable the ability to add new data sources but allow adding new datasets based on data connection that already exists, you would set

reportExplorer.EnabledNodes = ReportExplorerEnabledNodes.DataSets

If, however, you only wanted to allow adding of new parameters, you can use the command:

reportExplorer.EnabledNodes = ReportExplorerEnabledNodes.Parameters

Finally, to disable everything you can set the EnabledNodes to "None"

reportExplorer.EnabledNodes = ReportExplorerEnabledNodes.None

Localizing Page/RDL Charts at Runtime

In this release, we have also added the ability to localize charts in your Page and RDL reports. You can now use localization resources to localize chart properties, similar to other controls:

• Chart's header title
• Chart's footer title
• Chart's axis titles
• Chart's legend title

Web Report Designer Events

The Web Report Designer offers increased functionality and ease-of-use for end-users, as well as customization options for developers. With the release of 15.2, we've added a few handlers to make that customization that much better.

We have implemented an onBeforeRequest method, which enables developers to add custom headers for the Web Report Designer's requests. This method is added to the designerOptions.sever, which receives an HTTP request init object as an argument. This object can then be changed and returned.

The following code shows the use of the onBeforeRequest event handler:

designerOptions.server.onBeforeRequest = function(init) {
    console.dir(init);
    init.headers = {
        "Accept": "",
        "Accept-Language": "EN",
        "Cache-Control": "no-cache",
    };
return init;
};

Additionally, the following new handlers help you better control the implementation of the Web Report Designer in your application:

• onBeforeSave (or onBeforeSaveAs) - an async handler that cancels the saving process if returned false.
• onAfterSave (or onAfterSaveAs) - handler that is called when a report is successfully saved.
• onBeforeOpen - an async handler that cancels the opening of a document if returned false.
• onAfterOpen - a handler that is called when a document is successfully opened.
• onBeforeCreate - an async method that cancels the creation of a document if returned false.
• onAfterCreate - a handler that is called when a document is successfully created.

designerOptions.documentApiHandlers.onAfterOpen = function (options) {...};

Getting ActiveReports v15.2

Since this is a free update for any user with an ActiveReports 15 license, update by downloading the installer or using the PackageManager to update your NuGet packages to the latest build.

If you don't have ActiveReports 15 installed, you can download the online installer here.

Download Now!