Look mom, I can display barcodes on RDLC ReportViewer in ASP.NET without writing any code!

Displaying barcodes in ReportViewer RDLC (local reports) is always tricky. That’s because RDLC does not offer third-party custom controls integration like his parent Reporting Services RDL (server reports) do. If you want to display barcodes in RDLC reports using a barcode dll library, like our Barcode Professional for ASP.NET, you need to do some extra works on your report’s data source by including a new temp field for storing the barcode binary content which is generated at runtime before report rendering phase takes place. In addition to that, you also need to write the code for creating the barcode object to generate the output images.

NOTE: You can also create the Barcode object inside the Code section of the RDLC report. However, after some tests and experiences from our customers, we no longer recommend following such approach because it complicates the deployment and it does not always work as expected.

But wait a minute, there’s good news!!! One of our team members has just found an easier way to get barcodes in ASP.NET RDLC reports. Taking advantage of our “Codeless Barcode Generation (CBG)” feature available in our Barcode Professional for ASP.NET product, you can use it to generate barcodes and display them on RDLC reports without writing any line of code! This is a very simple approach yet powerful allowing you to render not only barcodes in the body section of the report but on others like the header & footer which are also tricky for displaying dynamic images. Take a look at this simple guide “How to use Codeless Barcode Generation feature in ReportViewer RDLC local reports in ASP.NET” to learn more about this new approach. Enjoy it!

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