Display a collection in a tablix cell (SSRS)

Question

I have an object that has a child collection:

class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public ICollection<PhoneNumber> PhoneNumbers { get; set; }
}

class PhoneNumber
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Number { get; set; }
}

The amount of those phone number can vary greatly. Tha table I need to get in the end:

---------------------------------
| John Doe | Home:   +1-800-666 |
|          | Work:   +1-800-777 |
---------------------------------
| Homer Si | Home:   +1-800-111 |
|          | Work:   +1-800-222 |
|          | Mobile: +1-800-333 |
---------------------------------

(I hope that it is obvious which fields are which in the above illustration) I can rework the data classes as I wish. I need to retain the formatting (I mean that the phone numbers must be aligned on one line as shown above).

The question is - what is the best way to do this? The major limitation I have is that I cannot write any code-behind for the report. I can only use the report XML (with subreports if needed, but keep in mind - no code-behind).

Is it at all possible?

PS I am using 2008 local reports

Answer 1

Well, we did not exactly find a solution to the question, but I can just say this: we basically ended up providing SQL-like structures as results of data queries. Because this is the way reporting services want it to be.

And believe me - just give up on trying to achieve some custom functionality in reporting. Just stop struggling and use the default methods.

As I mentioned, we used a SQL-like JOIN to get the desired format. The data returned from out provider is now in the following form:

______________________________________
|PersonName | PhoneType | PhoneNumber|
|___________|___________|____________|
|John Doe   | Home      | +123456    |
|John Doe   | Work      | +098765    |
|___________|___________|____________|
|Homer S.   | Mobile    | +654432    |
|Homer S.   | Home      | +654431    |
|Homer S.   | Work      | +654433    |
|___________|___________|____________|

And we just group the tablix on PersonName so that in the report it looks like this:

______________________________________
|PersonName | PhoneType | PhoneNumber|
|___________|___________|____________|
|John Doe   | Home      | +123456    |
|           | Work      | +098765    |
|___________|___________|____________|
|Homer S.   | Mobile    | +654432    |
|           | Home      | +654431    |
|           | Work      | +654433    |
|___________|___________|____________|

That is it.