Combining multiple subreports into a single report

The goal is to produce a single PDF consisting of a number of subreports. Some are landscape, others are portrait. The subreports may also be run as independent reports. The master report that contains them defaults to the width of the widest subreport, which is landscape. This causes all portrait subreports to spill over producing blank pages. Are there any work-arounds to concatenate multiple, single report PDFs into a single PDF and have page numbering too?

Thanks!

Have you tried reducing the body width to landscape? We had a similar requrement which we implemented with linked reports pointing to standalone reports and I don't recall having extra blank pages with mixed layouts.|||

I did check the landscape width for the reports both individualy and in the master report. They all render fine independently. I also tested the report rendering as I added each subreport to the master report. The moment I added the Landscape one, all portrait reports (that rendered fine before) spilled over onto subsequent pages. The subreports are embedded in a main report and not linked. Can you tell me more about how you configured your reports to be linked?

Thanks!

|||

I appologize I meant reducing the body width to portrait regardless of the fact that you have reports set to landscape. I believe at runtime the report server will expand the body width as needed.

A linked report is essentially a smart pointer to the actual report. You can create a linked reportin in the Report Manager. Go to the report properties and click on the Create Linked Report button. The advantage of having this point of indirection is that if the standalone report is moved, the linked report will automatically be redirected to the new location. Also, a linked report can have its own security policies, etc.

|||

Hi,

I was able to find information at this link:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155993.aspx

"Reporting Services does not provide a way to combine landscape and portrait mode pages in the same report, nor does it provide a way to create a print-based layout that replaces or exists alongside the layout of a report as rendered in a browser or other application. For most exported reports, report printouts include everything that is visible on the report, as viewed by the user on a computer monitor."

Not what I wanted to hear. Also, I was unable to find the Linked Reports option within Report Designer Report Properties. We are using Visual Studio 2005. Someone on the team provided these links for combining PDFs. This seems like a lot of work to go thru because of a missing feature. Even Word allows you to insert section breaks where you can specigy Landscapre or Portrait.

http://www.codeproject.com/cs/library/giospdfnetlibrary.asp

https://secure.codeproject.com/csharp/giospdfsplittermerger.asp

|||

Yes, this is correct. I appologize for giving you wrong information. Upon looking at our report package implementation, the master report width is set to Landscape. The Create Linked Report button is on the report properties (General Tab) assuming you use the Report Manager and have rights to create linked reports.

|||

Hi,

The mechanism that we've used to achieve this is to write some code using a PDF library to combine the reports. It goes off and renders the reports and then adds them to a master document. That way we can add page numbers, table of contents etc. and its all dynamic.

Sanjay

|||

Hi, and thanks.

That is what we ended up doing and I am posting the code for the benefit of others. We used PDFSharp (there are several others) and I modified one of their samples into the class below. It worked good and we ended up with one report that could have both landscape and portrait pages and page numbers.

#region PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF

//

// Copyright (c) 2005-2006 empira Software GmbH, Cologne (Germany)

//

// http://www.pdfsharp.com

//

// http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfsharp

//

// Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy

// of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal

// in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights

// to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell

// copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is

// furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

//

// The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in

// all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

//

// THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR

// IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,

// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS.

// IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,

// DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR

// OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE

// USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

#endregion

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using System.IO;

using PdfSharp;

using PdfSharp.Pdf;

using PdfSharp.Pdf.IO;

using PdfSharp.Drawing;

namespace successionManagement

{

public class CombinePdfs

{

public static PdfDocument combine(Stream[] streams, String fileName)

{

PdfDocument outputDocument = new PdfDocument();

XFont font = new XFont("arial", 8, XFontStyle.Regular);

XStringFormat format = new XStringFormat();

format.Alignment = XStringAlignment.Center;

format.LineAlignment = XLineAlignment.Far;

XGraphics gfx;

XRect box;

int totalPages = 0;

int currentPage = 0;

PdfDocument[] pdfDocuments = new PdfDocument[streams.Length];

for (int i = 0; i < streams.Length; i++)

{

Stream stream = (Stream) streams;

PdfDocument inputDocument = PdfReader.Open(stream, PdfDocumentOpenMode.Import);

totalPages = totalPages + inputDocument.PageCount;

pdfDocuments = inputDocument;

}

String pageNbrFooter;

for (int i=0; i < pdfDocuments.Length; i++)

{

PdfDocument inputDocument = (PdfDocument) pdfDocuments;

for (int idx = 0; idx < inputDocument.PageCount; idx++)

{

PdfPage page = inputDocument.Pages[idx];

currentPage = currentPage + 1;

pageNbrFooter = "Page " + currentPage + " of " + totalPages;

page = outputDocument.AddPage(page);

//Write document file name and page number on each page

gfx = XGraphics.FromPdfPage(page);

box = page.MediaBox.ToXRect();

box.Inflate(20, -10);

gfx.DrawString(String.Format( pageNbrFooter,0 ),

font, XBrushes.Black, box, format);

}

}

outputDocument.Save(fileName);

return outputDocument;

}

}

}

To invoke the class you would supply your stream in place of the pdf and the relative path. Here is a simple hard-coded path example.

Stream[] streams = new Stream[5];

streams[0] = new FileStream(@."c:/Lynette/portrait1.pdf", FileMode.Open);

streams[1] = new FileStream(@."c:/Lynette/portrait2.pdf", FileMode.Open);

streams[2] = new FileStream(@."c:/Lynette/portrait3.pdf", FileMode.Open);

streams[3] = new FileStream(@."c:/Lynette/landscape1.pdf", FileMode.Open);

streams[4] = new FileStream(@."c:/Lynette/portrait4.pdf", FileMode.Open);

PdfDocument combinedPdf = CombinePdfs.combine(streams,"c:/Lynette/myCombined.pdf");

|||

The code sample above should have a subscript in brackets but I guess that is also the symbol for an idea. How funny!

|||

Great solution to this issue. Thank you for posting the code!