ReportServer Forum

knelson

Member

Registered: 2021-06-28

Help with simple CSV display

Hello,

Please forgive me for being new. I just want to make a simple display on the Dashboard, similar to the "Top Employees Dashboard" on http://demo.raas.datenwerke.net/. The data I want to display are CSV files I have on my local computer. They are unusual in that they are delimited/separated by "|" (pipes) instead of "," commas. I would just like to display the information from them aggregated in a simple graph on my reportserver dashboard. This is what an example of one of my files would look like:

Date|Time|Name|Notes|Accommodation
6.7.2021|08:47|Chrissy|None|None
6.8.2021|09:00|Margaret|Out early|None
6.9.2021|16:20|Drake|Stayed late|Double pay

Etc, etc

I know that Reportserver supports CSV as a data type, and that it even supports unusual separators. The issue I have is that I don't know where I should put the CSV files so that Reportserver can access them, and how to tell it to modify/display it as a simple graph. I would be happy to know how to display just one CSV file on my dashboard, but the eventual goal is that I would be able to aggregate several CSV files (they all have the same number of columns, and the same headers), all in the same table.

I read over the "First Steps - Creating a Datasource" documentation, but I'm very confused by part "Enter the following JDBC connection URL: jdbc:h2:dbtemp/rsdemodb." I assume this is where I would point the datasource to my data, but I don't know where rsdemodb itself is.

Any help appreciated.

My reportserver specs are: Apache Tomcat 9.0, Java 8, MSSQL server hosted on a separate (network) VM

knelson

Member

Registered: 2021-06-28

Re: Help with simple CSV display

Hi, I'm sorry if this is a lot of information to ask someone. I'm just very stuck. I would be happy if someone could just tell me how to add CSV files in ReportServer so that it can access them.

jalbrecht

Administrator

Registered: 2016-10-21

Re: Help with simple CSV display

Dear Knelson,

pls. check https://reportserver.net/en/guides/admi … #CSV-Lists for a detailed description of how to create a csv datasource. There is an example here https://reportserver.net/blog/2016/08/0 … mic-lists/ as well.
The general idea is to create a datasourve for the csv file and query it as a dynamic list with a simple expression such as
SELECT * FROM $!{_RS_TMP_TABLENAME}
or, in your case,
SELECT * FROM $!{_RS_TMP_TABLENAME} WHERE NAME = 'Drake'
The easiest way to do it is to paste the data with a text separator of your choice into the datasource itself (see links above for more details), but that that makes sense only if the content is somehow static.

wbr jan

jalbrecht

Administrator

Registered: 2016-10-21

Re: Help with simple CSV display

Dear Knelson,
any progress here ?
regards jan