How to Create Reporting Application in C#

In software development, producing .NET reports, invoices, SQL Server reporting services, and other kinds of documentation is a standard necessity, particularly in business settings. Efficient production and management of papers or page reports are essential, ranging from financial statements to customer invoicing. Well-liked in the Microsoft ecosystem, C# has a plethora of libraries and .NET reporting tools to handle these kinds of jobs. One of the most potent of them is IronPDF, which can be used to create PDF documents in C# applications with ease. In this article, we are going to use IronPDF in a reporting application with C#.

How to Create a Reporting Application in C\

• Choose IronPDF and add the C# reporting tool to your development environment.
• With the help of IronPDF's tools, create interactive reports that include text, tables, and charts.
• Use IronPDF's data binding features to link your reports to pertinent data sources, such as databases or APIs.
• To prepare data for enterprise reporting, implement any necessary data processing logic (such as computations or filtering) within your C# code.
• To ensure your reports are accurate and useful, preview and test them using real data.
• Easily incorporate the produced reports into your C# application by utilizing IronPDF's features.
• To put your application to real use, deploy it to your production environment along with the reports that IronPDF created.

IronPDF

About IronPDF's Features and Benefits is a robust .NET reporting tool that empowers developers and .NET report designers with versatile solutions for generating, viewing, and designing reports within .NET applications. Developers may easily create, edit, generate reports, and render PDF documents within their applications with the help of the C# library IronPDF. Created by Iron Software, IronPDF makes it easier to create PDFs from any type of C# content, including HTML, ASPX, and MVC views. When developers want to add PDF production capabilities to their projects, they often turn to this tool because of its user-friendly API and strong features.

IronPDF provides easy-to-use features for .NET report viewers so that users may interact and navigate with reports created inside their apps with ease. A fluid and responsive user experience is guaranteed while viewing financial accounts, sales reports, or analytics data using IronPDF. IronPDF gives developers the ability to design and create visually attractive reports right within their applications with its integrated .NET report designers and reporting tools.

With IronPDF's smooth integration with SQL Server, developers may use database data from SQL Servers to create dynamic reports or share reports. IronPDF provides reliable reporting capabilities and smooth communication, regardless of whether it is integrating with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) or retrieving data directly from SQL Server.

Features of IronPDF

• Convert HTML to PDF: IronPDF enables the easy conversion of HTML information into PDF files with excellent quality. With the formatting and layout of the original information intact, developers and report designers can create PDFs straight from HTML strings, URLs, or local files.
• PDF Manipulation: Using IronPDF, programmers can add, remove, or change text, images, annotations, and pages in existing PDF documents. This makes it possible to create PDFs dynamically and customize them to meet certain needs using a report viewer.
• PDF Splitting and Merging: IronPDF helps with PDF splitting and merging. It can split a PDF document into several smaller files or combine multiple PDF documents into one file. Large collections of PDFs can be effectively managed and organized with the help of this report designer tool.
• Security and Encryption for PDF Documents: IronPDF offers complete support for applying different security settings as well as password-protected PDF encryption in the reporting solution. Developers are in charge of limiting access to private data and ensuring the privacy of PDF material.
• PDF Forms and Form Fields: With IronPDF, you can create and complete interactive PDF forms that include form fields like radio buttons, text boxes, checkboxes, and dropdown menus. This functionality is crucial for creating dynamic forms and gathering user input in PDF documents.
• Text Extraction: IronPDF enables automated text content extraction from PDF documents for developers. Document management systems and data processing apps can function better thanks to this feature, which allows text analysis, search, and indexing within PDF files.
• Image Extraction: With IronPDF, developers can easily obtain, display data, and manipulate image assets included within PDF files by extracting photos from PDF documents. Workflows involving content extraction and image processing will benefit from this capability.
• PDF Compression: IronPDF has integrated compression methods to minimize the size of PDF documents without sacrificing quality. With the help of this functionality, PDF files are optimized for web applications to perform better, load faster, and store more efficiently.
• End-User Report Designer: IronPDF includes an end-user report designer in addition to .NET reports, enabling non-technical users to produce and modify reports without the need for developer assistance.

To know more about IronPDF check the IronPDF Documentation.

Creating a New Project in Visual Studio

To launch a Visual Studio application, use the File menu from the top and choose File. Then click "New Project," then choose "Console application."

Enter the project name in the text field after choosing the file location path. Click the Create button and choose the required .NET Framework as seen in the sample below.

The Visual Studio project's organization will then depend on the chosen application. To add code and construct the application, just open the program.cs file. The internet application, Windows, or console can all be utilized.

After that, the library may be added, allowing us to create new reporting tools.

Install IronPDF Library

Using Visual Studio Tool, select NuGet Package Manager from the Tools Menu. Enter the Package Manager interface to access the package management terminal console.

# Example command to install a NuGet package
# Note: Replace `PACKAGE_NAME` with the actual package name you intend to install.
Install-Package IronPdf

# Example command to install a NuGet package
# Note: Replace `PACKAGE_NAME` with the actual package name you intend to install.
Install-Package IronPdf

After downloading and installing the package, it can now be utilized in the ongoing project.

You can also use the Package Manager method. Installing the package directly into the solution is possible with Visual Studio's NuGet Package Manager option. The image below demonstrates how to launch the NuGet Package Manager.

Use the NuGet website's search box to locate packages. Simply look up "IronPDF" in the package manager, as seen in the screenshot below:

The list of relevant search results is displayed in the image above. Adjust these settings to install the software on your machine.

Create a Report Application Using IronPDF

Here is some sample C# code that shows you how to use IronPDF to build a basic reporting tool. We'll create reports with a header, some text, and a footer in this example.

using IronPdf;
using System;

namespace ConsoleApp
{
    internal class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Create an instance of HtmlToPdf to render HTML content
            var renderer = new IronPdf.HtmlToPdf();

            // Define HTML content for the report data source
            string htmlContent = @"
            <html>
            <head>
                <style>
                    body {
                        font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
                        margin: 40px;
                    }
                    .header {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 24px;
                        margin-bottom: 20px;
                    }
                    .content {
                        margin-bottom: 40px;
                    }
                    .footer {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 14px;
                    }
                </style>
            </head>
            <body>
                <div class='header'>
                    Sample Report
                </div>
                <div class='content'>
                    <p>This is a sample report generated using IronPDF.</p>
                    <p>IronPDF provides powerful features for PDF generation in C# applications.</p>
                </div>
                <div class='footer'>
                    Generated by IronPDF
                </div>
            </body>
            </html>
            ";

            // Render the HTML content into a PDF document
            var pdfDocument = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(htmlContent);

            // Save the rendered PDF document to a file
            pdfDocument.SaveAs("output.pdf");

            // Dispose of the renderer object to free resources
            renderer.Dispose();

            // Display a success message
            Console.WriteLine("Report generated successfully!");
        }
    }
}

using IronPdf;
using System;

namespace ConsoleApp
{
    internal class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Create an instance of HtmlToPdf to render HTML content
            var renderer = new IronPdf.HtmlToPdf();

            // Define HTML content for the report data source
            string htmlContent = @"
            <html>
            <head>
                <style>
                    body {
                        font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
                        margin: 40px;
                    }
                    .header {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 24px;
                        margin-bottom: 20px;
                    }
                    .content {
                        margin-bottom: 40px;
                    }
                    .footer {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 14px;
                    }
                </style>
            </head>
            <body>
                <div class='header'>
                    Sample Report
                </div>
                <div class='content'>
                    <p>This is a sample report generated using IronPDF.</p>
                    <p>IronPDF provides powerful features for PDF generation in C# applications.</p>
                </div>
                <div class='footer'>
                    Generated by IronPDF
                </div>
            </body>
            </html>
            ";

            // Render the HTML content into a PDF document
            var pdfDocument = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(htmlContent);

            // Save the rendered PDF document to a file
            pdfDocument.SaveAs("output.pdf");

            // Dispose of the renderer object to free resources
            renderer.Dispose();

            // Display a success message
            Console.WriteLine("Report generated successfully!");
        }
    }
}

Imports IronPdf
Imports System

Namespace ConsoleApp
	Friend Class Program
		Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
			' Create an instance of HtmlToPdf to render HTML content
			Dim renderer = New IronPdf.HtmlToPdf()

			' Define HTML content for the report data source
			Dim htmlContent As String = "
            <html>
            <head>
                <style>
                    body {
                        font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
                        margin: 40px;
                    }
                    .header {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 24px;
                        margin-bottom: 20px;
                    }
                    .content {
                        margin-bottom: 40px;
                    }
                    .footer {
                        text-align: center;
                        font-size: 14px;
                    }
                </style>
            </head>
            <body>
                <div class='header'>
                    Sample Report
                </div>
                <div class='content'>
                    <p>This is a sample report generated using IronPDF.</p>
                    <p>IronPDF provides powerful features for PDF generation in C# applications.</p>
                </div>
                <div class='footer'>
                    Generated by IronPDF
                </div>
            </body>
            </html>
            "

			' Render the HTML content into a PDF document
			Dim pdfDocument = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(htmlContent)

			' Save the rendered PDF document to a file
			pdfDocument.SaveAs("output.pdf")

			' Dispose of the renderer object to free resources
			renderer.Dispose()

			' Display a success message
			Console.WriteLine("Report generated successfully!")
		End Sub
	End Class
End Namespace

In the above code, first, we import the IronPdf namespace to the project. Then we create a new object for HtmlToPdf. We then create an HTML string for the sample report. Right now we are using a static string, but if required, we could also build a dynamic report that pulls data from a data source or report server.

We pass the HTML string into the method RenderHtmlAsPdf which belongs to the renderer object created earlier. We then save the report by using the method SaveAs, passing the file name as a parameter. After saving the report document, we dispose of the created object.

With this, we can create any number of .NET reporting tools. Below are the output-generated reports from the above code.

To learn more about the IronPDF code, refer to How to Create PDFs using HTML.

Conclusion

Conclusively, IronPDF is a robust and adaptable .NET reporting tool that provides developers with all the solutions they need to create, view, and design reports inside their applications. IronPDF is the preferred option for .NET developers looking to improve their reporting capabilities because of its smooth integration, cutting-edge features, and compatibility with SQL Server.

IronPDF also expands its capabilities to include .NET reporting solutions, giving developers a plethora of possibilities to personalize and adjust reports to fulfill specific business needs.

A permanent license, upgrade options, and a year of software maintenance are all included in IronPDF's $749 Lite edition. The watermarked trial period allows users to assess the product in practical settings. Visit the IronPDF Licensing Information to find out more about IronPDF's pricing, licensing, and free trial. Go to the Iron Software Website to learn more about Iron Software.