ActiveReports 12
Use Custom Controls on Reports
ActiveReports 12 > ActiveReports User Guide > How To > Section Report How To > Work with Report Controls > Use Custom Controls on Reports

In a section report, ActiveReports allows you to drop a third party control onto the report design surface where it is recognized as a custom control. You can access its properties using type casting.

In the following steps, we use hidden textbox controls to populate a Visual Studio TreeView control. These steps assume that you have already added a Section Report (code-based) template in a Visual Studio project. See Adding an ActiveReport to a Project for more information.

To add the TreeView control to a report

  1. From the Visual Studio toolbox Common Controls tab, drag and drop a TreeView control onto the detail section of a report.
  2. Notice that in the Properties window, the control is called CustomControl1.

To add data and hidden TextBox controls to the report

  1. Connect the report to the sample Nwind.mdb. The following steps use the Orders table from the NWind database. By default, in ActiveReports, the Nwind.mdb file is located at [User Documents folder]\GrapeCity Samples\ActiveReports 12\Data\Nwind.mdb.
  2. From the Report Explorer, drag and drop the following fields onto the detail section of the report:
    • ShipCountry
    • ShipCity
    • CustomerID
    • EmployeeID
  3. On the design surface, select all four TextBox controls, and in the Properties window, change their Visible property to False.

To create a function to add nodes to the TreeView control

  1. Right-click the design surface and select View Code to see the code view for the report.
  2. Add the following code inside the report class to add a function to the report for adding nodes to the TreeView control.

    The following examples show what the code for the function looks like.

    To write the code in Visual Basic.NET

    Visual Basic.NET code. Paste INSIDE the report class.
    Copy Code
    Private Function AddNodeToTreeView(ByVal colNodes As TreeNodeCollection, ByVal sText As String) As TreeNode
       Dim objTreeNode As TreeNode
       objTreeNode = New TreeNode(sText)
       colNodes.Add(objTreeNode)
       Return objTreeNode
    End Function
    

    To write the code in C#

    C# code. Paste INSIDE the report class.
    Copy Code
    private TreeNode AddNodeToTreeView(TreeNodeCollection colNodes, string sText) 
    { 
        TreeNode objTreeNode; 
        objTreeNode = new TreeNode(sText); 
        colNodes.Add(objTreeNode); 
        return objTreeNode; 
    }
    

To access the TreeView control properties in code and assign data

  1. On the report design surface, double-click the detail section to create an event-handling method for the Detail_Format event.
  2. Add the following code to the handler to access the TreeView properties and assign data from the hidden TextBox controls.

    The following example shows what the code for the method looks like.

    To write the code in Visual Basic.NET

    Visual Basic.NET code. Paste INSIDE the Detail Format event.
    Copy Code

    'Type cast the custom control as a TreeView
    Dim TreeView1 As New TreeView
    TreeView1 = CType(Me.CustomControl1.Control, TreeView)

    'Create a tree node
    Dim objCountryTreeNode As TreeNode
    'Assign the text from a hidden textbox to the node
    objCountryTreeNode = AddNodeToTreeView(TreeView1.Nodes, Me.txtShipCountry1.Text)
    'Add a second-level node
    AddNodeToTreeView(objCountryTreeNode.Nodes, Me.txtShipCity1.Text)
    'Expand the top-level node so the second-level node is in view
    objCountryTreeNode.Expand()

    'Create a second top-level node
    Dim objCustomerTreeNode As TreeNode
    objCustomerTreeNode = AddNodeToTreeView(TreeView1.Nodes, Me.txtCustomerID1.Text)
    AddNodeToTreeView(objCustomerTreeNode.Nodes, Me.txtEmployeeID1.Text)
    objCustomerTreeNode.Expand()

    To write the code in C#

    C# code. Paste INSIDE the Detail Format event.
    Copy Code
    //Type cast the custom control as a TreeView 
    TreeView TreeView1 = new TreeView();
    TreeView1 = (TreeView)this.customControl1.Control; //Create a tree node
    TreeNode objCountryTreeNode;
    //Assign the text from a hidden textbox to the node
    objCountryTreeNode = AddNodeToTreeView(TreeView1.Nodes, this.txtShipCountry1.Text);
    //Add a second-level node
    AddNodeToTreeView(objCountryTreeNode.Nodes, this.txtShipCity1.Text);
    //Expand the top-level node so the second-level node is in view
    objCountryTreeNode.Expand(); //Create a second top-level node
    TreeNode objCustomerTreeNode;
    objCustomerTreeNode = AddNodeToTreeView(TreeView1.Nodes, this.txtCustomerID1.Text);
    AddNodeToTreeView(objCustomerTreeNode.Nodes, this.txtEmployeeID1.Text);
    objCustomerTreeNode.Expand();

To load the report in the Viewer, change the Form Load event

To write code in Visual Basic.NET

Visual Basic.NET code. Paste INSIDE the Form Load event
Copy Code
Dim ar = New SectionReport1()
ar.Run(False)
viewer1.LoadDocument(ar.Document)

To write code in C#

C# code. Paste INSIDE the Form Load event
Copy Code
var ar = new SectionReport1();
ar.Run(false);
viewer1.LoadDocument(ar.Document);
See Also