Free - Reporting XML data using Crystal Reports

Reporting on data sources such as: MS Access, SQL Server and Oracle, is common with Crystal Reports (CR). How about XML as data source? Well, sure, you might be wondering how to do that? Is it even possible? Well, with help of this article I’ll show you how to use the XML data source and report on it using CR.

Detail Section

Detail section of report will have the CD Catalog list details. Now the question is from where we'll get the data for it? Well, as you know in the beginning we added the DataSet to this project, we will use this DataSet as source of data to our report.

Adding DataSet as source of data to report is easy. You'll start with Right-Clicking on any open area on Report Designer->Database->Database Expert…  As a result of this action, Database Expert dialog box will appear. You can click on Project Data and expand the node ADO.NET DataSet. Please select the dtCDCatalog DataTable from our DataSet and click on ">" button to move it to selected tables section on right-hand side (Please see Figure 9).

Figure: 9 – Adding DataSet as report data source

Once report source is specified, all we have to do is drag and drop the fields from DataTable inside Detail section on report designer surface. You can drag and drop Title from Field Explorer inside details section.

As you drag and drop the fields inside detail section, you'll notice that tile of the filed also added to report designer. As we've already taken care of field header, just delete the default added field header. Please make sure the final report designer layout looks similar to Figure 10.

Figure: 10 – Final repot design layout

Although the report design looks complete; however, we have not yet worked on hierarchical functionality of this report. As you can see in Figure 1, all the employee names should form hierarchy based on ManagerID association.

Step 5: C# interface code

All right, we got all we needed as report design. Please make sure to have following C# code behind Form1.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace XMLCRReport
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DataSet dsReport = new dsCDCatalog();
            // create temp dataset to read xml information
            DataSet dsTempReport = new DataSet();
            try
            {
                // using ReadXml method of DataSet read XML data from books.xml file
                dsTempReport.ReadXml(@"C:\articles\XmlCrystalReport\cd_catalog.xml");
                // copy XML data from temp dataset to our typed data set
                dsReport.Tables[0].Merge(dsTempReport.Tables[0]);
                //prepare report for preview
                rptXMLData rptXMLReport = new rptXMLData();
                rptXMLReport.SetDataSource(dsReport.Tables[0]);
                crystalReportViewer1.DisplayGroupTree = false;
                crystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = rptXMLReport;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}