Majorsilence.Crystal.RptEngine 0.3.2

Majorsilence.Crystal

A .NET library for reading Crystal Reports .rpt files and converting them to SSRS RDL without requiring the SAP Crystal Reports runtime or SDK.

Overview

Crystal Reports .rpt files use a proprietary binary format (OLE Compound Document containing a TSLV stream). This library reverse-engineers that format to extract report structure, fields, formulas, groups, and layout, then generates SSRS 2005 RDL XML that can be loaded by SQL Server Reporting Services or MajorSilence Reporting.

Projects

Packages

Each project above except the viewer ships as a NuGet package of the same name. A tag vX.Y.Z builds and tests them at version X.Y.Z and drafts a GitHub release holding them; publishing that release pushes them to nuget.org (publish-nuget.yml, Trusted Publishing, no stored key). Which to reference:

• To render an .rpt with your own data, reference Majorsilence.Crystal.RptEngine; it brings the others and the cross-platform (SkiaSharp) build of the engine with it.
• To convert an .rpt to RDL for another engine or for editing, reference Majorsilence.Crystal.Converter (which brings Parser and Model).
• To read the structure only (fields, parameters, subreports, object positions), Majorsilence.Crystal.Parser.

using System.Data;
using Majorsilence.Crystal.RptEngine;
using Majorsilence.Crystal.Runtime;

ReportEngine.Init();   // once per process

var data = new DataTable();
data.Columns.Add("Customer Name", typeof(string));   // the report's own column names
data.Rows.Add("Alice");

var overrides = new RuntimeOverrides
{
    Data = data,
    Parameters = { ["Region"] = "West" },   // read by the parameter's declared type
    Suppress = { ["Text3"] = true },        // object names, matched case-insensitively
};

using var rpt = File.OpenRead("report.rpt");
var result = await new ReportEngine().ExportWithWarningsAsync(rpt, overrides, ExportFormat.Pdf);
File.WriteAllBytes($"report.{result.Extension}", result.Bytes);
foreach (var warning in result.Warnings)   // an override that named nothing, never a failure
    Console.WriteLine(warning);

The engine never opens the connection a template names: data comes only from RuntimeOverrides.Data and, for a subreport, RuntimeOverrides.SubreportData (a table per subreport name), and a dataset given none renders empty. Formats are Pdf, Csv, Excel (.xlsx, laid out as the page), ExcelDataOnly and Rtf. What the engine cannot do yet is listed under Known Limitations; ROADMAP.md says what is planned and BACKLOG.md what was measured.

Report Viewer / Compat Layer

Majorsilence.Crystal.UI.Avalonia provides an interactive viewer with a Crystal-Reports-like API (report document in, ReportLoaded event out), backed by push-model in-memory data and rendered via a locally modified Majorsilence.Reporting.UI.RdlAvalonia:

flowchart TB
    RPT[".rpt file"] & Data["Pushed DataTable\n(RuntimeOverrides)"] --> Doc["RptReportDocument"]

    subgraph UI["Majorsilence.Crystal.UI.Avalonia — compat layer"]
        Doc --> Viewer["RptReportViewer"]
        Manager["RptReportManager"] -.shows window with.-> Viewer
    end

    subgraph Core["Majorsilence.Crystal.* (engine-agnostic)"]
        Viewer --> RptParser["Parser.RptParser"]
        RptParser --> Prep["Runtime.RenderPrep"]
        Prep -->|"RDL XML"| Bridge
    end

    subgraph Reporting["Majorsilence.Reporting.* (modified)"]
        Bridge(("RDLParser.Parse")) --> Report["Report\n.DataSets[x].SetData(...)"]
        Viewer -->|"SetReportAsync(report)"| AVR["AvaloniaReportViewer\n(+SetReportAsync/ReportLoaded/CurrentPages)"]
        AVR --> Report
        AVR --> Canvas["ReportCanvas\n(toolbar, zoom, pages, export)"]
    end

    Canvas --> Screen["Rendered pages on screen"]

Requirements

• .NET 10 SDK

Build

dotnet build

Usage

using Majorsilence.Crystal.Parser;
using Majorsilence.Crystal.Converter;

var result = RptParser.Parse("report.rpt");
if (result.Success)
{
    string rdl = new RdlConverter().Convert(result.Report!);
    File.WriteAllText("report.rdl", rdl);
}

Running the Tests

Unit and integration tests require no setup:

dotnet test

The corpus tests run against 40 real-world .rpt files that are not included in the repository due to licensing. Download them first:

bash scripts/download-test-rpts.sh --download-only
dotnet test

The corpus files are sourced from the public benbrahim777/Crystal-Reports repository. If the corpus directory (tests/rpt-corpus/) is absent, those tests are silently skipped — the rest of the test suite (409+ tests) runs without them.

What is Converted

• Report sections: ReportHeader, PageHeader, GroupHeader, Details, GroupFooter, PageFooter, ReportFooter
• Database fields, formula fields, running total fields, special fields (Page Number, Print Date, Report Title, etc.)
• Groups with sort direction, group header text, and group footer aggregates
• Record selection formula converted to SSRS dataset filters
• TextObject content with inline field references resolved
• FieldObject bounds, fonts (name, size, bold, italic, underline), foreground color, and text alignment
• Crystal formula syntax transpiled to SSRS VB.NET expressions via an Irony-based grammar, with a regex fallback for unrecognised constructs
• Crystal color constants (crRed, crBlack, etc.) mapped to CSS color strings for use in SSRS style expressions

Known Limitations

• Connection strings: The QESession OLE stream is encrypted with a proprietary key and cannot be decoded. The generated RDL carries the server or DSN name where the file records one and an empty <ConnectString/> otherwise; fill it in for an engine that should run the query. RptEngine never does: it renders from pushed data only.
• One flattened table: RuntimeOverrides.Data is one DataTable. A report that reads several tables needs them joined before they are pushed, since the file's table links are not decoded yet. A subreport takes one table the same way, through RuntimeOverrides.SubreportData.
• Sort order: The report's own sort fields are not decoded yet; RuntimeOverrides.SortByFieldName supplies one at render time.
• Printer paper: A template that names no paper prints, in Crystal, on the default paper of whichever printer it is formatted against. With no printer to ask, it is laid out on the page its designer's printer held; RuntimeOverrides.PrinterPaper supplies the host printer's paper instead.
• Crystal summary fields (group-level aggregates defined via the Crystal UI): Not parsed from the binary. Numeric columns in group footers get a =Sum() expression by heuristic; non-numeric columns are left empty.
• Cross-tab and OLAP grid objects: Not supported. Reports that consist primarily of cross-tab objects will produce an RDL with an empty body.
• Crystal variable declarations (Local NumberVar, Local StringVar, etc.) in formula fields: Cannot be translated to SSRS VB.NET and are emitted as ="".

Other implementations

MrSrsen/rpt-rs is an independent project with the same goal — reading and rendering Crystal Reports .rpt files without the SAP runtime — written in Rust rather than C#, under MPL-2.0. Worth knowing about if you are comparing approaches or want a second opinion on what a given file contains.

Its tests/fixtures/reports tree also carries roughly 160 reports beyond the public benbrahim777 set this project already uses, which makes it a useful extra corpus to check a parser against. scripts/download-test-rpts.sh --with-rpt-rs fetches those into tests/rpt-corpus-external/. They are not committed here — they are that project's own test assets, and the directory is git-ignored.

License

Tri-licensed under your choice of MIT, Apache 2.0, or BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE for the full text of all three licenses.