Creating PDF Reports (Layout Engine) Overview

Programmatically creating real-time PDF reports using DynamicPDF Core Suite for .NET (previously DynamicPDF ReportWriter for .NET functionality) is simple and straight forward. DynamicPDF Designer makes it easy to visually create DLEX files (report templates) for use with DynamicPDF ReportWriter for .NET. The main class used is the DocumentLayout class. It loads DLEX files and creates PDF reports based on them.

Creating a report flow generally consists of the following flow.

  1. In Designer, create a report template (a DLEX file) and save.
  2. In your code, create a DocumentLayout class from that DLEX file.
  3. Call the Layout method to return a Document object that contains the reports data.
  4. Output the document to a file, Stream, byte array, or directly to IIS output stream.

The object returned from the DocumentLayout.Layout method is a Document object. The created Document object can then be used with other DynamicPDF Core Suite classes. See PDF Creation Overview for more information on working with the Document object. For more information on using DLEX files, refer to the DLEX Files topic.

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