Composite Report

Comments

• Anu de Deus Hampshire, UK

  August 2010 edited 7:55PM

  When I need to merge 2 different reports, I actually copy the TfrxReportPage objects from one report into another, in code.
  Something like this:
  

        for i := 0 to fChildReport.PagesCount - 1 do
        begin
          // get a handle to the page to be merged
          if fChildReport.Pages[i] is TFrxReportPage then
          begin
            lPage := TFrxReportPage(fChildReport.Pages[i]);
            if lPage.visible then // I ignore non-visible pages
            begin
              // create new page, so it doesn't affect original components
              lNewPage := TFrxReportPage.Create(nil { fReport } );
  
              lPageText := ReportObjToText(lPage);  //<< my own function, just saves to a stream and then into a tstringlist to store it as a text.
             <lots of customizations can be done here>
              ReportObjFromText(lNewPage, lPageText);   << loads the new page object with the text contents of the previous one.
              lNewPage.name := NewRandomName << don't use .CreateUniqueName here, it's not good enough for this case
              fReport.InsertComponent(lNewPage);
            end;
       end;
  

  Now, that code is very simple, and work with very simple reports.
  However, some problems must be worked around, as you will need to load all datasources as well into the main report object (not shown in the code above).
  Also, you need to rename datasources and parameters that have the same name in all reports. And if you do that, you will have to update all the fields that reference them to use the new names.
  If you design your reports from the ground with unique names for everything, you will be free of most problems.
  I suggest you try the code above with simple reports without any use of datasources, just to see if it's applicable to you, then move forward step by step, by adding one datasource with only one memoview referencing it in the report.
  And by the way, if you have script code in your reports, you will have to find a way to merge them too. It can be done, because I did it.
  I hope it helps
  
• John Pendule

  August 2010 edited 7:55PM

  Thank you for your answer. I will try.
• inetMark

  January 2011 edited January 2011

  Where I can find ReportObjToText() and ReportObjFromText() and what type is lPageText, please?
  Can you please put here these your functions?
  Thanks.