Monday, June 8, 2009

How To Render Reporting Services Reports From ASP.NET MVC

Frequently, I'll have add-on reports that we don't necessarily want to deploy to a full Reporting Services installation.  I don't need the scheduling or other features of Reporting Services and would rather just run them in-application and return the result.  To this end, I've written a "WebReportRender" class that takes an .rdlc and renders it as a PDF to the browser.  In WebForms, this meant some goo to render the Http headers to trigger a file download in the browser. I've wrapped all that nicely and it's served me well the past few years. Now,  ASP.NET MVC adds a nice FileContentResult which wraps some of this goo for you.  To reuse WebReportRender in  ASP.NET MVC, I had to add methods to just output the byte array without the Http Headers:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
 
using Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms;
 
 
namespace LifeCycle.Reporting
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Assists in executing and rendering Reporting Service reports.
    /// </summary>
    public class WebReportRenderer : IDisposable
    {
        #region Private fields
        private string fullReportPath;
        private string downloadFileName;
        private LocalReport reportInstance;
        private MemoryStream reportMemoryStream;
        private string reportMimeType;
        #endregion
        #region Constructor
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="WebReportRenderer"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="reportPath">The report path.</param>
        /// <param name="downloadFileName">Name of the download file.</param>
        public WebReportRenderer(string reportPath, string downloadFileName)
        {
            if (HttpContext.Current == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("This class is only for use from web applications.");
 
            this.downloadFileName = downloadFileName;
            fullReportPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(reportPath);
            using (System.IO.FileStream reportFile = new System.IO.FileStream(fullReportPath, System.IO.FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
            {
                reportInstance = new LocalReport();
                reportInstance.LoadReportDefinition(reportFile);
            }
        }
        #endregion
        #region Properties
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the report instance.
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>The report instance.</value>
        public LocalReport ReportInstance
        {
            get
            {
                return reportInstance;
            }
        }
        #endregion
        #region Public Methods
        /// <summary>
        /// Renders the current ReportInstance to the user's browser as a PDF download.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="pdfDeviceInfoSettings">The PDF device info settings (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms154682.aspx).</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public Warning[] RenderToBrowserPDF(string pdfDeviceInfoSettings)
        {
            CreateStreamCallback callback = new Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.CreateStreamCallback(CreateWebBrowserStream);
            Warning[] warnings;
            HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
            HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + downloadFileName + "\"");
            reportInstance.Render("PDF", null, callback, out warnings);
            return warnings;
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Renders the current ReportInstance to the user's browser as a PDF download.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public Warning[] RenderToBrowserPDF()
        {
            return RenderToBrowserPDF(null);
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Renders the current ReportInstance to an email with a file attachment containing the report.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="pdfDeviceInfoSettings">The PDF device info settings (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms154682.aspx).</param>
        /// <param name="toAddress">To address.</param>
        /// <param name="fromAddress">From address.</param>
        /// <param name="subject">The subject.</param>
        /// <param name="body">The body.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public Warning[] RenderToEmailPDF(string pdfDeviceInfoSettings, string toAddress, string fromAddress, string subject, string body)
        {
            CreateStreamCallback callback = CreateMemoryStream;
            Warning[] warnings;
            reportInstance.Render("PDF", pdfDeviceInfoSettings, callback, out warnings);
            reportMemoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
 
            var client = new SmtpClient();
            using (var message = new MailMessage(fromAddress, toAddress, subject, body))
            using (var attachment = new Attachment(reportMemoryStream, reportMimeType))
            {
                attachment.Name = downloadFileName;
                message.Attachments.Add(attachment);
                client.Send(message);
            }
            return warnings;
        }
 
 
        public byte[] RenderToBytesPDF()
        {
            string mimeType;
            string encoding;
            string fileNameExtension;
            string[] streams;
            Warning[] warnings;
            return reportInstance.Render("PDF", null, out mimeType, out encoding, out fileNameExtension, out streams,
                                         out warnings);
        }
 
        public byte[] RenderToBytesExcel()
        {
            string mimeType;
            string encoding;
            string fileNameExtension;
            string[] streams;
            Warning[] warnings;
            return reportInstance.Render("EXCEL", null, out mimeType, out encoding, out fileNameExtension, out streams,
                                         out warnings);
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Renders the current ReportInstance to an email with a file attachment containing the report.
        /// </summary>        
        /// <param name="toAddress">To address.</param>
        /// <param name="fromAddress">From address.</param>
        /// <param name="subject">The subject.</param>
        /// <param name="body">The body.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public Warning[] RenderToEmailPDF(string toAddress, string fromAddress, string subject, string body)
        {
            return RenderToEmailPDF(null, toAddress, fromAddress, subject, body);
        }
        #endregion
        #region Private Methods
        /// <summary>
        /// Formats the current response output and returns the output stream suitable for rendering to the browser as a file download.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="name">The name.</param>
        /// <param name="extension">The extension.</param>
        /// <param name="encoding">The encoding.</param>
        /// <param name="mimeType">Type of the MIME.</param>
        /// <param name="willSeek">if set to <c>true</c> [will seek].</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private Stream CreateWebBrowserStream(string name, string extension, System.Text.Encoding encoding, string mimeType, bool willSeek)
        {
 
            return HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream;
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a memory stream that can be used by the report when rendering to an email attachment.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="name">The name.</param>
        /// <param name="extension">The extension.</param>
        /// <param name="encoding">The encoding.</param>
        /// <param name="mimeType">Type of the MIME.</param>
        /// <param name="willSeek">if set to <c>true</c> [will seek].</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private Stream CreateMemoryStream(string name, string extension, System.Text.Encoding encoding, string mimeType, bool willSeek)
        {
            reportMemoryStream = new MemoryStream();
            reportMimeType = mimeType;
            return reportMemoryStream;
        }
        #endregion
        #region IDisposable Members
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Performs application-defined tasks associated with freeing, releasing, or resetting unmanaged resources.
        /// </summary>
        public void Dispose()
        {
            if (this.reportInstance != null) this.reportInstance.Dispose();
            if (this.reportMemoryStream != null) this.reportMemoryStream.Dispose();
        }
 
        #endregion
 
       
    }   
 
 
}

Using WebReportRenderer from ASP.NET MVC is simple:

byte[] result;
using (var renderer = new WebReportRenderer(@"~\Report.rdlc", "Report.pdf"))
{
       var adapter = new ReportTableAdapter();                
       renderer.ReportInstance.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource("ReportDataSet_Report", adapter.GetData()));
       ReportParameter p0 = new ReportParameter("p0", someValue);
       renderer.ReportInstance.SetParameters(new[] {p0});
       result = renderer.RenderToBytesPDF();
}
return File(result,"application/pdf", "Report.pdf");
 

This isn't something you'd use for high volume reports, or if you need advanced delivery or scheduling capabilities.  But for one-off reports that only a few people will ever use, it works pretty well.

5 comments:

Saravanan said...

Hi Daniel,
i was seraching ssrs solution same to your post and found this is what i am looking for. can you direct me how to use this rendering option in asp .net ( steps to be followed or a sample project ). sorry to ask you i am very new to asp .net

Andy said...

Can you tell me where ReportTableAdapter is coming from? It looks like I am missing a class or namespace (I am very new to Reporting Services)

Thanks.

Daniel Root said...

ReportTableAdapter can be found in Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms

ovalgrove said...

Nice post, good work.

Any ideas on possibility of rendering output to html and add that to the page request?

Basically, unable to use ReportVierwer control.

Kiquenet said...

In my production environment only, not Preproduction, I get OutOfMemory errors when I call


byte[] renderedBytes = localReport.Render(reportType, deviceInfo, out mimeType, out encoding, out fileNameExtension, out streams, out warnings);


I have the called in static method. Maybe better in IDisposable class?

Any suggestions ?
Render, with CreateStream callback? but I haven't seen a good sample