How to connect FastReport using a WPF application

With the long-awaited release of FastReport WPF, you no longer need to use FastReport .NET to work with WPF-based projects.

Not long ago, it was pretty inconvenient to use WPF in FastReport .NET. Not everything worked smoothly; there were issues with connecting FastReport.dll and many other things. We have rethought the approach and made the process more convenient and practical. Let's find out about the new method.

First, we need to create a WPF application. We go to Visual Studio and create a project in it. After creation, we will connect the required NuGet package. We are interested in FastReport.WPF. It can be obtained with our private NuGet server.

After we have connected the required NuGet package, we need to connect the namespace. Let's write code in WPF form:

xmlns:Designer="clr-namespace:FastReport.Design;assembly=FastReport.WPF"

Next, we will create Designer Control. First, we open and close the DockPanel tags and create the Designer itself in them. We should get something like the following example:

<DockPanel>
 <Designer:WpfDesignerControl x:Name="designer" Loaded="designer_Loaded"/>
</DockPanel>

If we look at the entire form code, we should get the following:

If we look at the form, we will see that we have a designer, and that’s what we need. It means that we are moving in the right direction.

We can confidently launch our project. After loading, we will see the ready-to-use designer.

Connecting FastReport to a WPF application has become much more convenient. You no longer need to create intermediate code to run WPF applications with WinForms components from FastReport .NET.