Green bar printouts can be created by alternating the shading or background color of the report's Detail section in the Format event.

This walkthrough illustrates how to create a green bar report.

The walkthrough is split up into the following activities:

• Creating a new Visual Studio project
• Adding an ActiveReport to a Visual Studio project
• Connecting the report to a data source
• Adding controls to the report to contain data
• Adding code to the detail format event to alternate colors
• Viewing the report 

To complete the walkthrough, you must have access to the Northwind database.
A copy is located at C:\Program Files\Data Dynamics\ActiveReports for .NET 3.0\Data\NWIND.MDB.

When you have finished this walkthrough, you will have a report that looks similar to the following.

Creating a new Visual Studio project

To create a new Visual Studio project

1. Open Visual Studio.

2. From the File menu, select New > Project.

3. Select the project type and click Windows Application.
4. Change the name of your project and click OK.

Adding an ActiveReport to a Visual Studio project

To add an ActiveReport to your project

1. Open a new project in Visual Studio.
2. From the Project menu, select Add New Item.
3. Select ActiveReports 3.0 File and rename the file rptGreenBar.
4. Click Open.

Connecting the data source to a database

To connect the data source to a database

1. Click on the gray report DataSource icon in the Detail section to open the Report Data Source dialog.
2. Select the "OLE DB" tab.
3. Click Build.
4. Select "Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider" and click Next.
5. Click the ellipsis button to browse for the access path to the Northwind database. Click Open once you have selected the appropriate access path.
6. Click OK to continue.
7. In the Query field, type "SELECT * FROM Products".
8. Click OK to return to the report design surface.

Adding controls to contain data

To add controls to the report

1. Set the CanShrink property of the Detail section to True.
2. In the Report Explorer, expand the Fields node, then the Bound node. Drag the following fields onto the detail section and set the properties of each textbox as indicated.

   Field	Text	Location
   ProductID	Product ID	0, 0
   ProductName	Product Name	0.9, 0
   UnitsInStock	Units in Stock	3.5, 0
   UnitsOnOrder	Units on Order	4.5, 0
   ReorderLevel	Reorder Level	5.6, 0

3. Set the CanShrink property of the PageHeader section to True.
4. Add the following controls to the PageHeader section:

   Control	Name	Text	Formatting	Location
   Label	lblTitle	Reorder Sheet	Font 14pt; Bold; Center	0, 0
   Label	lblProductID	Product ID	Underline	0, 0.37
   Label	lblProductName	Product Name	Underline	0.9, 0.37
   Label	lblUnitsInStock	Units in Stock	Underline	3.5, 0.37
   Label	lblUnitsOnOrder	Units on Order	Underline	4.5, 0.37
   Label	lblReorderLevel	Reorder Level	Underline	5.6, 0.37

Adding code to the detail format event to alternate colors

To write the code in C# or Visual Basic

• Double-click the detail section of the report to create an event-handling method for the detail format event. Add code to the handler to:
  • Alternate background colors 

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

  'Visual Basic
  Dim I As Integer
  Private Sub Detail1_Format(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles _
        Detail1.Format
      If (I Mod 2) = 0 Then 
         Detail1.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.DarkSeaGreen
      Else
          Detail1.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Transparent
      End If
     I = I + 1
  End Sub
  
  //C#
  bool color;
  private void detail_Format(object sender, System.EventArgs eArgs)
  {
     if(color)
     {
        color =false;
        this.detail.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.DarkSeaGreen;
     }
     else
     {
        this.detail.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Transparent;
        color = true;
      }
   }

Viewing the report

To view the report

1. Add the ActiveReports viewer control to a Windows Form.
2. Add the code needed to set the viewer document equal to the report document. See Using the ActiveReports Windows Form Viewer for help.

See Also

 

 

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