This article will demo the use of Reporting Services SOAP API to integrate with a web application. We will begin by creating a new Web Project in VS 2008 and configuring the web.config so we can authenticate using impersonation. Next, we will reference the ReportingService2005 web services proxy object. Finally, enter some code to render a list of reports from within the Report Catalog.
For this example, we will be using Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET/C# for sample code.
This article assumes you have the following:
- SQL Server 2008 and Reporting Services installed
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 installed
- Reporting Services 2008 installed and a configured Report Server
- Experience with Reporting Services 2005/2008
- Experience with ASP.NET and C#
- Exposure to Web Services
Steps Taken:
- Create a ASP.NET Web Application project
- Reference the Reporting Services WSDL
- Add Treeview control to web form
- Develop code to consume Reporting Services Web Service
Create new ASP.NET Web Application
1) Open Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 from Start >> All Programs >> Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 >> Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
2) From the menubar, select File >> New >> Project
3) Expand the C# node and select the Web child node.
4) From the template pane, select ASP.NET Web Application.
5) Name the project "RSIntegrationDemo".
6) Click OK.
Reference Reporting Services WSDL
1) From within your Solution Explorer pane, right click on the project name and select Add Web Reference... to create a new web services reference.
2) For URL: enter "http://localhost/reportserver/ReportService2005.asmx?wsdl" (replace localhost with your server name, if different).
3) For Web Reference Name: enter RS2005.
4) Click Add Reference button.
You will notice a new folder named Web References with RS2005 reference located within the folder.
You have completed referencing the Reporting Services WSDL
Adding a TreeView Control
1) When you create your project, the ASP.NET Web Application template should have included a default.aspx page, along with a default.aspx.cs file. If you do not have this file, please add a new web form to your project and name it "default.aspx".
2) Open the default.aspx web form in design mode.
3) Point to the Toolbox pane (if not visible) and expand the Navigation tab.
4) Drag on drop the TreeView object to the default.aspx web form.
5) From within the design pane, right click the TreeView item you just added and select properties.
6) From the properties pane on the right, name the TreeView "tvCatalog".
Steps 7-9 are optional.
7) Right click on the TreeView object and click the right arrow to expand the TreeView Tasks.
8) Select Auto Format...
9) From the Select a scheme:, select "XP File Explorer" and then click OK.
10) Save your work.
Consuming the Reporting Services Web Service
1) Open the default.aspx.cs file.
2) In order to communicate with our web service we need to add the following reference to our file.
using RSIntegrationDemo.RS2005;
3) Add the following code above Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
private ReportingService2005 rs;
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
4) We need to create and instance of ReportingService2005 and pass credentials in order to authenticate to the web service. Enter the following code within the Page_Load event.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
rs = new ReportingService2005();
// Create an instance of the Web service proxy and set the credentials
rs.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
if(!IsPostBack)
BuildTreeView();
}
Note: The DefaultCredentials property applies only to NTLM, negotiate, and Kerberos-based authentication. For ASP.NET applications, the default credentials are the user credentials of the logged-in user, or the user being impersonated. If you have problems authenticating, make sure the application pool account used has permissions to SSRS.
5) Next, we will add our private methods, which will populate the treeview control with report items from the catalog. The first method, BuildTreeView() creates the Parent Node for our treeview control. The Method then calls the GetCatalogItems() method, which populates the treeview control with Report Items.
Objects and Methods used:
CatalogItem - This object is used to return a report item from the report server database. We will pass an array of CatalogItem objects.
ListChildren - This will return a list of children withing a specified folder. For example, if we wanted all folder, reports, datasources, etc. returned, we would simply pass the following:
/// <summary>
/// Build Treeview
/// </summary>
private void BuildTreeView()
{
TreeNode RootNode = new TreeNode();
// give root node a name
RootNode.Text = "Report Server";
RootNode.Expanded = true;
// add node to treeview object
tvCatalog.Nodes.AddAt(0, RootNode);
// populate treeview with catalog items
GetCatalogItems(string.Empty, RootNode);
}
/// <summary>
/// recursivly get folder items from report
/// server catalog; render to treeview control
/// </summary>
/// <param name="catalogPath"></param>
/// <param name="parentNode"></param>
private void GetCatalogItems(string catalogPath, TreeNode parentNode)
{
CatalogItem[] items;
try
{
// if catalog path is empty, use root, if not pass the folder path
if (catalogPath.Length == 0)
{
items = rs.ListChildren("/", false); // no recursion (false)
}
else
{
items = rs.ListChildren(catalogPath, false); // no recursion (false)
}
// iterate through catalog items and populate treeview control
foreach (CatalogItem item in items)
{
// if folder is hidden, skip it
if (item.Hidden != true)
{
// ensure only folders are rendered
if (item.Type.Equals(ItemTypeEnum.Folder) &
(item.Type != ItemTypeEnum.DataSource
& item.Name != "Data Sources"))
{
TreeNode folderNode = new TreeNode(item.Name, null);
folderNode.ImageUrl = GetNodeImage(item.Type);
folderNode.Text = item.Name;
folderNode.Value = item.Path;
folderNode.ToolTip = item.Name;
//Add the node to the parent node collection
parentNode.ChildNodes.Add(folderNode);
// recurse
GetCatalogItems(item.Path, folderNode);
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw (new Exception(ex.Message));
}
finally
{
rs.Dispose();
}
}
6) Add the following method to handle the node image
/// <summary>
/// Gets corresponding node image
/// (e.g., folder, reports,..)
/// </summary>
/// <param name="type"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
private string GetNodeImage(ItemTypeEnum type)
{
string imagePath = string.Empty;
switch (type)
{
case ItemTypeEnum.Folder:
imagePath = folderImage;
break;
case ItemTypeEnum.Report:
imagePath = reportImage;
break;
case ItemTypeEnum.LinkedReport:
imagePath = reportImage;
break;
}
return imagePath;
}
7) Add the following Constants
const string reportImage = "~/images/report.gif";
const string folderImage = "~/images/folder.gif";
You can get the images from the download below.
Optionally, you may consider using a custom user control to handle this functionality.
Download code here:
RSIntegrationDemo.zip (442.21 kb)