Question

I have a List<Customer> which is a linq object from a table. I want to generate a letter per customer by iterating through this list and writing a PDF to disc.

I want to use Crystal Reports, in the database expert I have chosen .Net Objects and selected my Linq.Customer object as the source. This shows all my fields as expected and I can create the report fine.

I am getting the exception “Data Source is not valid”

This is my code

public void GenerateLetters(List<Customer> customers){

      foreach(Customer cust in customers){

             this.Generate(cust);

       }

}

Where Generate() is:

public Generate(Customer cust){

            // this is the crystal reports letter
            Letter letter = new Letter();

            // set data source
            letter.SetDataSource(cust);    // exception thrown here

            // get the pdf stream
            pdfStream = (MemoryStream)letter.
                        ExportToStream(CrystalDecisions.Shared.ExportFormatType.PortableDocFormat);

            // copy to byte array
            fileBytes = pdfStream.ToArray();

            // clean up
            pdfStream.Close();
            letter.Dispose();


}

I am getting the exception on setting the Data source, does anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

I’m not very familiar to Crystal but try to pass a List<Customer> as datasource:

letter.SetDataSource(new List<Customer>() { cust });