Read Blob to Text in Business Central Report Extension

Question

I am creating a Report for Business Central, a Purchase Order Report. The Purchase Order page is extended to add Work Description which is a blob data type. I have added the blob field to my Report Extension and now I went to convert the Blob to Text like it is seen in my page. Example: "This is a Test Work Description". I believe I have to use InStream and then Read. Can someone provide example code to assist me in adding this to my report as text?

Answer 1

You can find good examples here on the Microsoft documentation: Write, WriteText, Read, and ReadText Method Behavior for Line Endings and Zero Terminators

But I think this is what you need:

procedure GetWorkDescription (PurchHeader: Record "Purchase Header")WorkDescription: Text
var
    MyInStream: InStream;

begin
    Clear(WorkDescription);
    PurchHeader.Calcfields("Work Description");
    If PurchHeader."Work Description".HasValue() then begin
        PurchHeader."Work Description".CreateInStream(MyInStream);
        MyInStream.Read(WorkDescription);
    end;
end;

Answer 2

This example worked perfectly Job! I just wanted to add to it. In my Purchase header, I added the following code:

column(WorkDescription; GetWorkDescription())
            {
            }

Then in OnPreReport() added at the end:

        WorkDescription: Text;

Then at the very end added the Procedure:

    procedure GetWorkDescription(): Text
    var
        TypeHelper: Codeunit "Type Helper";
        InStream: InStream;
    begin
        "Purchase Header".CalcFields("Purchase Header"."Work Description");
        "Purchase Header".Work Description".CreateInStream(InStream, TEXTENCODING::UTF8);
        exit(TypeHelper.ReadAsTextWithSeparator(InStream, TypeHelper.LFSeparator));
    end;

With the help of your sample code I was able to generate the actual text!