Printing and Reports

Report Layout Editor

You can create reports for desktop applications using the Report Layout Editor. To create a report, use the
Insert button or menu and select Report. This adds a report to your project and displays the Report Layout
Editor.
You can specify the units for the ruler in Inches, Millimeters or Pixels and specify the width of the report page
using the Inspector.
Much like the Window Layout Editor, you drag controls onto the Report Layout Editor to design you reports.
The Reports uses a “banded” report design containing multiple bands where information can appear. By
default, you see three bands: PageHeader, Body and PageFooter.
Whatever is in the PageHeader band appears at the top of every page, including the first page. Similarly, what
is in the PageFooter band appears at the bottom of every page, including the first page.
The Body band is repeated for each line of data that is in the report. For example, if you have a report that is
displaying a list of Teams, then you will get a separate Body band for each team.
In order to display data, a report has to have a data set, which is discussed in the next section of this chapter.

Report Layout Editor Controls

There are a variety of controls that you can use in your reports, including: Field, Label, Picture, Line, Oval,
Rectangle, RoundRectangle, Date and Page Number. Each control has two events that can be used for any
processing: AfterPrinting and BeforePrinting.

Field
A Field on a report is used to display report data. The fields map to the data source you use with the report, by
specifying a value in the DataField property. Generally, you use Fields within the Body band, but they work in
any band.

Label
Like a Label on a Window or Web Page, a Label on a report displays text. Labels are used for things like report
titles and column headings.

Picture
A Picture is used to display a picture on the report. The picture can be specified when you are designing the
report or it can be specified at run-time using information in your data source.

Line, Oval, Rectangle, RoundRectangle

Used to draw shapes on the report.

Date
Used to display the current date when the report is generated.

Page Number
Displays the page number on each page of the report.
If you wanted to display the Teams from the examples that have been previously used for XML, JSON and

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databases, you could do a layout similar to this.

Grouping
Groups are used to display related data together. For example, in the Team and Player examples, there are
two sources of data: teams and players. You could use Grouping on a report to display the teams with each
player on the team listed below the team name and perhaps indented slightly.
To add a group to the report, you click the “Add New Group” button on the toolbar. This creates two new
bands, called GroupHeader1 and GroupFooter1, where you can place additional information. The information
in the Group Header appears once for each group. The information in the Group Footer also appears once for
each group, but is displayed after the information in the Detail band.

Report Layout Editor Toolbar

The Report Layout Editor Toolbar contains buttons that allow you to alter the layout of the report. This
includes:

Add New Group

Adds a new Group to the report layout. This adds both a Group Header and a Group Footer to the layout.

Add New Page Header/Footer

Used to add a Page Header/Footer to a report. A report can only have a single set of Page Header/Footer
bands. Since it is possible to delete these bands, use this item to add them back.

Order Forward, Top, Backward, Back

Changes the layering of the controls on the report layout.

Fill Width, Height

Fills the size of the control to match its parent container.

Align Left, Right, Top, Button

Aligns selected report controls with each other.

Space Horizontally, Vertically

Spaces the selected report controls equally apart from each other.