Introduction

FastReport Online Designer is a web version of the desktop FastReport.Net designer. Online report designer is a RIA (Rich Internet application) application that allows you to run it on any device that has a modern Internet browser. Online designer will work in recent versions of popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE). But, despite all these cross-platform advantages, the online version is inferior to desktop version in terms of convenience and functionality.

Thus, FastReport Online Designer positioned as an editor of .Net reports that have already been created and placed on any UUID on the server. Online designer communicates with the server through a specified pre-API, which includes 3 requests:

  • getReport - is used for initialization. Gets the report template and sends it to the online designer that prepares a report for editing in the browser.

  • previewReport (preview mode) - edited report template is sent to the server, which builds the report and returns it in html format. The report runs on the server via FastReport.Net.

  • saveReport - saves the report template to the server.

For each query you should pass the UUID of the report to the server using a parameter to identify the report on the server.

The product is developed with the latest capabilities of modern browsers. For example, thanks to HTML5, once downloading the online designer, you can use it when not connected to the network.

FastReport Designer Online has a monolithic kernel, enabling the connection of modules, which are components of/bands/dialog components and some other parts of the system. To identify these modules and their dependencies the technology RequireJS is used. Such modularity allows you to build a product for the needs of the client with the necessary components, which reduces the size of the project (since this is a web app, the size is very important and the smaller, the better). For individual assemblies the online designer provides the designer constructor.

It is worth mentioning other technologies used in FastReport Online Designer. Traditionally used jQuery, and the client’s template engine uses jsrender and RequireJS. Script code editor uses CodeMirror, that can be embedded in the report.

The current version of FastReport Online Designer is missing a RFID Label component. Also not all components are available in dialogue forms. Only present: Button, CheckBox, CheckedListBox, ComboBox, DateTimePicker, Label, ListBox, MonthCalendar, RadioButton, TextObject.