In the enterprise world it seems that if you want to display a report, you have to use a reporting framework. You name it: Crystal reports, Jasper reports, ActiveReports, SSRS. But I fail to see why, in 2015, you should prefer a reporting framework over generating an HTML page server side. In a .NET application, for example, what is the advantage of using such framework over a simpler approach of using razor to generate an html web page? That page can be then printed to generate a pdf.
It seems to me that there is a perceived difference when the word "report" is mentioned, that for some reasone requires a separate framework.
Of course usually a reporting framework offer additional features, like a report viewer, but in many cases it's used just to generate a pdf. The advantage of using html+css+js over any other proprietary language to describe a report are to me uncountable: more maintainable, easier to read and write, html is a standard understood by anyone, and there is no need to add another piece to the technology stack of your web service.
I understand my question up to now can be seen as not conforming to SO guidelines, so I'll try to make a more precise question rather than a rant against the enterprise world.
Question
Let's say my use case is to generate a report like this one:
inside a page or an iframe. What are the advantages of using, say, Crystal Reports or ActiveReports, in an ASP.NET web site instead of using Razor rendering as I do for all the rest of my service? Is there anything I should be more careful when generating reports compared to normal reports? If the bonus I get is that crappy top bar at the top of the page, well, I would gladly get rid of the pain of using a Reporting Framework.
So you generate an HTML page. How are you going to print it? Are you going to pull in a library to do it? What's your strategy for properly styling it and making sure that navigation elements don't end up in the printed report? How are you going to support exporting to Word, Excel, CSV, or PDF?
Reporting tools often take care of those details for you.
That said, in my own applications I usually generate PDF's with Razor PDF (and I tell people to print the PDF), generate Excel exports with EPPlus, Word documents with DocX, and don't offer CSV as I hate that format. It means I typically have to redo every single report for each format, but I like the control I get over the output.
Related
I have a project where I need to create an HTML form (no problem) and then create a PDF file from the results using C#.
I have done this before in PHP using FPDF but this one needs to be C#. Ideally I want to put the code into a user control and then stick it in an Umbraco website.
Can anyone recommend a good way to do this? PDF doesn't need to be fancy, it'll just display text, we aim to create a generic purchase order based on what the customer wants from the form, which can then be emailed to them to print off on headed paper.
Thanks
There are a couple of recent problems with iTextSharp. The most annoying is that in the latest version they've deprecated the HTML parser. So now everything has to work through the XMLWorkerHelper singleton and parses through ParseXHtml. I find this a real pain, since HTML pages which aren't well formed appear fine on browser, parse OK in the old method and now crash out with an exception. So it necessitates an extra step to make sure your HTML is well formed (as XHTML) first. If you are generating your HTML from an ASPX page, then using Server.Execute() to get the stream, then this might be useful to you for iTextSharp:
http://jwcooney.com/2012/12/30/generate-a-pdf-from-an-asp-net-web-page-using-the-itextsharp-xmlworker-namespace/
Be mindful that iTextSharp has a distinct lack of any decent documentation of the modern changes (being mindful that the Java iText documents don't translate perfectly to C#), it makes the learning curve far too long and steep for any practical use in short spaces of time. I've basically given up on that platform, though may just create a baseline system to get something working lean whilst I then learn another framework.
As a result, I'm looking at PDFizer and PDFSharp libraries. If I have some success, I'll report back.
here is a library for converting HTML to PDF
http://pdfcrowd.com/web-html-to-pdf-net/
I like the PDFsharp library. Not sure how it would work for your needs, though.
We are using Report Definition laguage (RDL) templates to define various reports in one of our Sharepoint applications. These reports are (then) saved as PDFs into various SharePoint Document Library's. One report in-particular renders, but is considered to be "failing" due to the styling needs of the report. So it appears RDL only understand "very simple" HTML.
For Example:
Trademark characters are not rendering as superscript (they render as normal text instead)
The ability to assign Line Height fails
The ability to assign Word Spacing fails (so printers "leading" requirements fail)
Both of these point to various marked Microsoft limitation for RDL's to interprint various HTML...of which we are now aware.
So...
I need a better tool...and we are scratching our heads on this one!
QUESTION:
What tools take-in HTML, understand CSS (well!) and can generate PDFs from C-Sharp objects?
Please keep in-mind I need the to PDF generator tools you recommend (below) to understand CSS and HTML.
NOTE:
I looked at the various other StackEchange sites to see if there is a better forum for this particular question, but this one was the only one that seemed to fit-the-bill. If you are a mediator, and feel this question is mis-placed, please feel free to move this question.
This HTML to PDF converter has the most accurate conversion of a complex html/css page. There is also a demo to try the conversion with your html
Maybe you can give Amyuni WebkitPDF a try. It is a Free component for converting HTML+CSS into PDF files. From the home page:
Directly convert HTML files into PDF without the use of a web browser or a printer driver
Convert HTML files into XAML/XPS for rendering within Silverlight
Integrate and deploy the HTML conversion feature within your applications
Generate either a single continuous PDF page or split the HTML into multiple PDF pages
Amyuni WebkitPDF is distributed as a library with a sample application, and sample code for C++ and C#.
Disclaimer: I currently work as software developer at Amyuni Technologies.
I only know a workaround for the "leading space" issue. This example "leads" the value with 10 spaces:
=space(10) & Fields!FieldName.Value
This should work for any renderer, I'll update this if I come around other tricks.
Have a look at Aspose.Pdf for .NET: http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.pdf-for-.net/default.aspx
I know this is a little subjective, but I'm looking into the following situation:
I need to produce a number of documents automatically from data in a SQL Server database. There will be an MVC3 app sat on the database to allow data entry etc. and (probably) a "Go" button to produce the documents.
There needs to be some business logic about how these documents are created, named and stored (e.g. "Parent" documents get one name and go in one folder, "Child" documents get a computed name and go in a sub-folder.
The documents can either be PDF or Doc(x) (or even both), as long as the output can be in EN-US and AR-QA (RTL text)
I know there are a number of options from SSRS, Crystal Reports, VSTO, "manual" PDF in code, word mail merge, etc... and we already have an HTML to PDF tool if thats any use?
Does anyone have any real world advice on how to go about this and what the "best" (most pragmatic) approach would be? The less "extras" I need to install and configure on a server the better - the faster the development the better (as always!!)
Findings so far:
Word Mail Merge (or VSTO)
Simply doesn't offer the simplicity, control and flexibility I require - shame really. Would be nice to define a dotx and be able to pass in the data to it on an individual basis to generate the docx. Only way I could acheive this (and I may be wrong here) was to loop through controls/bookmarks by name and replace the values...messy.
OpenXML
Creating documents based on dotx templates, even using OpenXML is not as simple as (IMHO) it should be. You have to replace each Content control by name, so maintenance isn't the simplest task.
SSRS
On the face of it this is a good solution (although it needs SQL Enterprise), however it gets more complicated if you want to dynamically produce the folders and documents. Data driven subscription gets very close to what I want though.
Winnovative HTML to PDF Convertor*
This is the tool we already have (albeit a .Net 2.0 version). This allows me to generate the HTML pages and convert those to PDF. A good option for me since I can run this on an MVC3 website adn pass the parameters into the controllers to generate the PDF's. This gives me much finer-grained control over the folder and naming structures - the issue with this method is simply generating the pages in the correct way. A bonus is that it automatically gives me a "preview"...basiclly just the HTML page!
Office OpenXML is a nice and simple way of generating office files. XSLT's can be strong tool to format your content. This technology will not let you create pdf's.
Fast development without using any third party components will be difficult. But if you do consider using a report server, make sure to check out BIRT or Jasper.
To generate pdf's I have been using the deprecated Report.net. It has many ports to different languages and is still sufficient to make simple pdf's. Report.net on sourceforge
I dont think SQL Server itself can produce pdf files. What you can do is, as you mentioned, install an instance of SSRS and create a report that produces the information you need. Then you can create a subscription to deliver your report to where you want, when you want.
Here is an example of a simple subscription:
Go for SSRS only if you are OK with setting it up on a server and there is a definite need for schedule reporting and complex reports.
If you have code for manual PDF/docx generation, I would suggest to go ahead with it. Hopefully the complexity of its code is not a matter to you.
I have used both in separate scenarios. We used excel classes and objects from .NET for a minimal reporting from a web application.
But went for an elaborate reporting scheme for a system which required 1000s of reports to be generated in a scheduled manner and delivered to selected set of people.
I need to generate a high quality report based on information in a SQL Server database, and I want very explicit control of the layout and appearance from inside C#.
I have several choices that I know of that are already being used for various other reports at our company:
1) SQL Server's built in Reporting Services
2) Adobe Forms
3) Crystal Reports
This information I need as PDF directly parallels what is already being displayed in the user's web browser as HTML, so creating a print stylesheet and converting the browser body to PDF is an option as well.
So this creates option 4:
4) JavaScript convert HTML to PDF (my preference at this time)
Does anybody have a recommendation as to which approach I should take, or even better an alternative? All the choices seem pretty horrible.
I've used iTextSharp with very good results. It is an open-source .NET port of a java library. It works really well for creating PDFs from scratch. Remember that editing PDFs will always be hacky with any library, because PDF is an output format, not a read-write format.
Provided your HTML is fairly clean (remove javascript postbacks, anchors, ...),the iText HtmlWorker can convert HTML to PDF, if you prefer that route.
HTML to PDF in using iTextSharp:
Document doc = new Document(PageSize.A4);
HTMLWorker parser = new HTMLWorker(doc);
PdfWriter.GetInstance(doc, Response.OutputStream);
Also here.
Use SSRS, it has a built in PDF rendering mode.
I have used two other PDF report libraries with great success; Active Reports and Telerik Reporting. Personally I prefer the latter when it comes to programmatic control of layout and such.
Take a look also at the DevExpress Reporting (non-free 3rd party tool):
Overview
Online Demos
Documentation
Yes, you should use the best tools to get the best solution. The best tool in this case probably is SSRS.
But that's just looking at the capabilities of the tool.
Don't forget to look at your own capabilities!
My story: I know SQL, I know C#. (Both intermediate, I'm not a guru.)
Then I lay my hands on SSRS. And burnt them, once, twice, etc.
At the end, there was a nice result. So burning your fingers is not a wrong thing to do.
But first try to pull your html through an html to pdf converter (demo version) and see if the result it serves your needs.
Currently I'm using both:
SSRS for creating invoices, because amounts have to be transported from one page to the next
Winnovative to generate documents that only need page numbers
I would suggest using .Net ReportViewer control in local mode (no report server required). It works in both webforms and winforms. You create a client-side report (.rdlc) file (which contains all the visuals as well as placement of data fields), link it up to the ReportViewer, and supply the data (DataTable or collection of objects, as long as the fields match, it doesn't matter). In client mode it supports exporting to pdf and excel (and Word too? don't remember). By default these done by a dropdown in the control itself however you can programmatically export to any of the supported formats as well. You'll end up with a byte array you can shove into a file stream.
Basically you get most of the good parts of SSRS without all of that backend complexity. There should be a ReportViewer folder in %programFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\ReportViewer - but versions exist for 2005 and 2008 as well. Check out http://gotreportviewer.com/
I think the 4th option is the best. In this case you don't need to change either layout of the HTML page or a layout of PDF, if one of them has been changed.
It is also more convenient making a nice design via HTML than programmatically via C# :)
Take a look at WebToPDF.NET which is a .NET component written in C# that converts HTML to PDF. The converter supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 including page breaks, forms and links. It passes all W3C tests (except BIDI).
You can use Fast Report it's good tool and i has a free version
Well, heres my scenario.
Client/Server winforms application with SQL Express as the DB. I need to be able to print invoice, packing slips etc..
i would like the customer to be able to modify the invoices. ie. be able to put their logo or change font sizes etc...basically format the display.
Things i have considered so far are.
1) Use a template engine (similar to codesmith or mygeneration) and use templates that output HTML. Then print the html page.
2) Use ReportViewer in local mode. I've heard that users can download a plugin for web dev express and edit the local report files. can anyone confirm this?
3) Use Reportviewer in remote mode.
I don't have much experience with ReportViewer so I'm not sure if i should use local or remote mode as well.
Those of you that have done this kind of thing before whats your recommendation?
After just completing a project with it, I would heartily recommend iTextSharp to create your invoices and other forms as PDFs. In addition to creating PDFs from scratch, you can also use it to fill in PDF forms and/or templates created with Acrobat (or even MS Office/OpenOffice). And it's free.
It's pretty easy to use in Windows apps or in ASP.Net applications. Most of the documentation and the books on it (iText in Action, for example) are about the original Java version, iText. However, there are tutorials and example code on the conversion process and, for the most part, all of the functions and libraries work the same in the .Net version, so adapting the book and reference code has been no problem.
I definitely learned the hard way that HTML and CSS are great for browsers (well, great except for the "every browser interprets it different" problem), but horrible for trying to generate consistent, attractive, and precise printed output and forms.
I'm personally using Aspose Words: they use word documents as templates, and I'm using Words bookmarks function to mark and retrieve the fields I need to fill.
Aspose works nicely with Tables (ie: you can add lines to a table, etc...) and sees Word documents as XML documents. You can then save the document as MSWord or PDF.
I wouldn't say it's the greatest library in the world, but it's definitely worth having a look :)
you can use Crystal Report for this. But first you need to scan the INVOICE and save it as an image,
Next is, on your crystal report, export the image on to it, and DRAG the fields to where they must print on the invoice (IMAGE SERVES AS YOUR GUIDE). Then after everything has been set-up, DELETE THE IMAGE and try it.
hope this helps.