ZUGFeRD/Factur-X Invoices

ActiveReports provides a special API for performing additional manual steps, required for creating ZUGFeRD reports. For details about this extension, see FeRD website.

You should note the information below when working with a ZUGFeRD report:

It should have the PDF/A-3 format.
It should have the ZUGFeRD-invoice.xml attachment. We suggest to use the Data Excel export or CSV/XML/JSON exports to obtain data. We also suggest to use this library to generate ZUGFeRD-invoice.xml (for ZUGFeRD 1.0) or zugferd-invoice.xml (for ZUGFeRD 2.0) or factur-x.xml (for ZUGFeRD 2.1 and Factur-X).
It should have additional XMP metadata.

Adding Metadata in PDFs

An example of adding metadescriptions

Metadata such as keywords, descriptions are used by the search engines to narrow down the searches. You can add a number of predefined accessors, such as title, contributors, creators, copyright, description, etc. using AdditionalMetadata property. The allowed namespaces are:

Dim rptPath As System.IO.FileInfo = New System.IO.FileInfo("..\..\PageReport1.rdlx")
Dim pageReport As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath)
Dim outputDirectory As System.IO.DirectoryInfo = New System.IO.DirectoryInfo("C:\MyPDF")
outputDirectory.Create()
Dim pdfSetting = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings()
'Imports GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf
pdfSetting.AdditionalMetadata.Add(New AdditionalMetadataInfo With {
        .[Namespace] = AdditionalMetadataNamespace.PurlOrg,
        .Key = "title",
        .Value = "Invoice"
    })

Dim pdfRenderingExtension As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension()
Dim outputProvider As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory, System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name))
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = True

pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting)

// Provide the Page report you want to render.
System.IO.FileInfo rptPath = new System.IO.FileInfo(@"..\..\PageReport1.rdlx");
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport pageReport = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath);

// Create an output directory.
System.IO.DirectoryInfo outputDirectory = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(@"C:\MyPDF");
outputDirectory.Create();

// Add meta data.
var pdfSetting = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings();

// using GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf;
pdfSetting.AdditionalMetadata.Add(new AdditionalMetadataInfo
{
    Namespace = AdditionalMetadataNamespace.PurlOrg, // Dublin Core Properties
    Key = "title",
    Value = "Invoice"
});
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension pdfRenderingExtension = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension();
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider outputProvider = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory, System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name));
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = true;
pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting);

Adding Attachment

An example of adding metadescriptions

You can include an attachment as metadata (such as invoices) to exported PDFs using Attachments property. This property allows attaching files such as a .xml or a .txt file in PDF. Below is the code example to export RDLX and Page reports to PDF and attach a file to the exported PDF.

' Provide the Page report you want to render.
Dim rptPath As System.IO.FileInfo = New System.IO.FileInfo("..\..\PageReport1.rdlx")
Dim pageReport As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath)

' Create an output directory.
Dim outputDirectory As System.IO.DirectoryInfo = New System.IO.DirectoryInfo("C:\MyPDF")
outputDirectory.Create()

' Add attachment.
Dim pdfSetting = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings()
pdfSetting.Attachments.Add(New AttachmentInfo With {
   .Name = "file.txt",
   .Content = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes("D:\Reports\file.txt"),
   .Description = "attachment description" ' optional
})
Dim pdfRenderingExtension As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension()
Dim outputProvider As GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider = New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory, System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name))
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = True
pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting)

// Provide the Page report you want to render.
System.IO.FileInfo rptPath = new System.IO.FileInfo(@"..\..\PageReport1.rdlx");
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport pageReport = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath);

// Create an output directory.
System.IO.DirectoryInfo outputDirectory = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(@"C:\MyPDF");
outputDirectory.Create();

// Add attachment.
var pdfSetting = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings();
// using GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf;
pdfSetting.Attachments.Add(new AttachmentInfo
{
    Name = "file.txt",
    Content = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(@"D:\Reports\file.txt"),
    Description = "attachment description" // optional
});
// or
//{
//   Name = "file.xml",
//   Content = File.ReadAllBytes(Application.StartupPath + "\\file.xml")
//};
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension pdfRenderingExtension = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension();
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider outputProvider = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory, System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name));
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = true;
pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting);

Open the exported PDF and you should see the attachment. Check the left sidebar in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.

type=note
Note: Metadata in PDFs is part of the Professional Edition. It is supported with the PDF version PDF/A-3b (or higher).