building a report solely in code

rbuser

hi,
i'm looking how to use/manipulate RB so i can print out a report completely
written in code
i mean, i can not design the report through the report designer cause i
don't have data in such way that i can use the banded report style
a lot of calculations have to be done and the layout is depending on these
calculations on the fly
so basically a need to write one big procedure wich will eventually gives me
a preview of the report to be printed
are there examples available on how to draw boxes, do field alignment etc
etc using nothing but code?
never done this so be gently
tia,
marc

digitalmetaphors

Here is an example which creates reports, subreports, controls and groups in
code.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/DynamicReportCreation.zip
http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/DynamicSubreportCreation.zip


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

jim,
before i dig into the examples,
is it possible to 'use' RB non-banded
i mean, i just want to print line by line but the boxes wich make the
columns for example should be automagically generated
is this possible or do i have to work with the bands and grouping and
subreports and so on?

tia,
marc

digitalmetaphors

RB is a banded report writer. You can resize the detail band to be the
height of the page and print one record per page to emulate forms in
conjunction with the PageStyle band that prints behind all other bands for
the form layout.

The report has a columns property if this is what you mean. Otherwise, just
drop shapes and lines in a report and let the detail band reprint the lines
down the page. Use a group footer to print the bottom line of the columns.
If you have linked data, then you will want to use subreports as these are
very powerful in that you can place them anywhere in the detail band when
ParentWidth is false.

If you try to use RB in a page only layout, there is no built in feature to
reprint the controls for data records if you don't use detail bands. You'll
have to perform this manually. You can write your own data traversal engine
and create draw command objects on page objects which can be cached in the
publisher object of the report. It is going to be much easier to use RB in a
banded way as it should be able to handle any layout you can dream of.

Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Jim,
well i'm gonna try it to build the report the banded way but i seriously
doubt it that it can be archieved
anyway the explanation you gave sets me on the right track
thx!
marc