Crystal Report Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: How to insert a logo into the Report Header at runtime

Now how hard can it be to insert a picture into the report header of a Crystal Report at runtime – apparently this is not a straightforward exercise and I implore the folks at SAP to look at this as an area for improvement.

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Anyway,  I wanted the users of our reports to be able to customize the business logo they used on the reports before they generate the report – I thought this would be easily done by passing the image as a report parameter in some way, but I thought wrong.  After much searching around and reading copious amounts of posts from other’s many of which led to the backstreets of nowhere, I developed the following 8 easy steps.

1. Create a dataset,
2. Create a table in that dataset,
3. Add a column to the table that will store the image
4. Define an xml schema for that table
5. Read in the image as a byte array, to the dataset
6. Set the dataset as the datasource for the report.
7. Add in the logo->image field to the Crystal Report
8. Create the dataset connection in the Crystal Report Database Expert based on the xsd created in the code below [check out the last line] and insert logo blob field on report.

Below is the C# code developed using Visual Studio 2010 and SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
DataSet ReportDS = new DataSet();

//Create a "Logo" Table and insert an image column
DataTable logoTable = new DataTable("Logo");
logoTable.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("Image", typeof(System.Byte[])));

//Add table to the dataset to be associated with the report
ReportDS.Tables.Add(logoTable);

//Add a row to our new table
DataRow logoDR = ReportDS.Tables["Logo"].NewRow();

//Only required to generate a matching xsd for use by the Crystal Report Field Explorer!
ReportDS.WriteXmlSchema(@"c:\temp\test.xsd");

//Read in the image file to a filestream
FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\test.bmp", FileMode.Open);

BinaryReader binaryReader = new BinaryReader(fileStream);
logoDR["Image"] = binaryReader.ReadBytes((int)binaryReader.BaseStream.Length);

ReportDS.Tables["Logo"].Rows.Add(logoDR);

fileStream.Close();
binaryReader.Close();

this.CrystalReport11.SetDataSource(ReportDS);
}

The Test.xsd generated by the .WriteXmlschema() above should look like this –

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Now it is time to place the Logo Blob field in the Report Header.

i.) From the Field Explorer->Database Fields->Database Expert, create a new ADO.NET(xml) connection.

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ii). From the Database Expert-> Available Datasources, select the newly created datasource and move the table over to the “Selected Tables” listbox.

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iii). Under the “Database Fields” in the “Field Explorer” should be the new table called “logo”plus a field called “image” which can be dragged into the Report Header.

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