Changing text on a header band label when printing sub-report

rbuser

I'm attempting to do something which seems simple in theory, but is
turning out to be very difficult in practice.

I have a report that prints a bunch of sub-reports in its summary band.
When one of these sub-reports is printing, I need a label in the
reports header band to have additional text appended to it.

I initially thought I could use the
TppChildReport.OnStartFirstPass/OnEndFirstPass events to set a flag,
which could be used to determine whether this extra text should be
appended. But due to the way the events fire, this isn't a reliable
approach. In particular it breaks down when navigating pages in the
report preview, or when printing a sub-range or pages, as the
OnStartFirstPass event may not fire when expected.

I then thought I could duplicate the parent report's header in the
sub-report, and change the label text on the sub-report header only.
But in order for the sub-report header to be shown, I had to set the
TppSubReport.PrintBehaviour property to pbSection. And when I do that,
the sub-report is not printing where I need it to, as I can't use the
ShiftRelativeTo property any more.

Any hints of how to achieve this seemingly simple task would be
greatfully received.

--
Cheers,
David Clegg
https://www.twitter.com/delphijunkie

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's
even remotely true." - Homer Simpson

nicocizik

Hi David,

Which version of ReportBuilder and Delphi are you using?

You may have to experiment with different report events to get the
effect you are after and simply check the boolean properties
Report.FirstPass or Report.SecondPass to be sure the correct code is
executing.

Of course the best way to achieve this would be pre-process your data
and compile the header label before printing the report.

rbuser

Nico Cizik (Digital Metaphors) wrote:


Delphi XE7, and ReportBuilder 12.03


I've tried all the likely looking events, and
OnStartFirsPass/OnEndFirstPass seem like the ones to use. The issue is
how they fire.

For example, if my master report has 5 pages worth of data in its
detail band's dataset, the OnStartFirstPass event will fire whenever
page 5 is rendered (either when printing the report or in the report
preview window). The OnEndFirstPass event will fire after the last page
of the subreport is rendered.

Now consider that my subreport has 1 page worth of data to display ,
and that its title band is configured to force a page break (giving 6
report pages in total). If we are in the report preview, this is what
happens in various navigation scenarios.

Page 4 -> Page 5
Page 5 renders
TppChildReport.OnStartFirstPass fires
Page 5 -> Page 6
Page 6 renders
TppChildReport.OnEndFirstPass fires
Page 6 -> Page 5
Page 5 renders
TppChildReport.OnStartFirstPass fires
Page 5 -> Page 4
Page 4 renders
Page 4 -> Last page
Page 6 renders

As you can see from the above, I can't reliably use the
OnStartFirstPass & OnEndFirstPass events of the subreport to determine
if we're rendering one of its pages. Whenver the page that contains the
subreport is rendered, the OnStartFirstPass event fires, even if we're
navigating backwards. But when we go to the previous page, the
OnEndFirstPass event doesn't fire.

I can work around that if I also keep track of the page number being
rendered, but this breaks down if we navigate directly to the last
page, as OnStartFirstPass never fires. It also breaks down if the user
prints a page range that only includes the subreport (in this case,
printing only page 6).


I've also tried to utilise these properties, but with no success yet.


I wouldn't mind hearing more about this, but I suspect your approach
may still break down.

What we have is a label that needs to show some data if the master
report (or other subreports) is rendering its elements, but show other
data if a certain subreport is rendering its elements. It's the
determination of when this subreport is rendering its elements that is
proving problematic.

--
Cheers,
David Clegg
https://www.twitter.com/delphijunkie

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's that life is one crushing
defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead." - Homer
Simpson

rbuser

Nico Cizik (Digital Metaphors) wrote:


OK, so I've got a solution that seems to be working, based on checking
these properties. In the first pass, I'm saving the first page number
of the sub-report. This is done in the OnPrint event of one of the
labels on the sub-report.

Then on the second pass of the report, I can refer to this and
determine if we are on a page in the sub-reports page range.

Thanks for pushing me in the right direction.

--
Cheers,
David Clegg
https://www.twitter.com/delphijunkie

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's
even remotely true." - Homer Simpson

nicocizik

Hi David,

Great! Glad you were able to find a solution.

Moving forward we hope you will consider upgrading to the latest version
of ReportBuilder. We have added hundreds of new features, enhancements,
and bug fixes since RB 12 and rely on customers like you to keep the
product moving forward, and provide high quality support.

See the following link for what has been added for RB 18. Use the side
bar to see the new features for previous versions as well.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/rbWiki/General/What's_New/RB_18