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

Project	Purpose
Majorsilence.Crystal.Model	Neutral AST — ReportDefinition, sections, fields, objects
Majorsilence.Crystal.Parser	OLE reader, TSLV parser, AES-CFB128 decryptor, zlib inflate
Majorsilence.Crystal.Converter	RDL emitter and Crystal formula transpiler (Irony grammar)

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"]

Loading

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 contains an empty <ConnectString/> that must be filled in manually.
• 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 ="".

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.