Forcing Movement to Next Item within Data Band

Purpose Summary

This page describes how to force movement to the next item within a data band in reporting templates.

You can instruct the engine to force movement to the next item within a data band using a next tag. This feature is useful in label-print-like scenarios when you need to output data about a fixed number of items in a single table row like in the following example. Given that Clients is a DataTable instance having a field named “Name”, you can use the following template to output three client names per table row while outputting names of all clients in a single table.

<<foreach [c in Clients]>><<[c.Name]>>

<<next>><<[c.Name]>>

<<next>><<[c.Name]>> <</foreach>>

In this case, the engine produces a report as follows.

A Company	B Ltd.	C & D
E Corp.	F & Partners	G & Co.
H Group	I & Sons	J Ent.

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FAQ

1. Q: What does the next tag do inside a data band?
   A: The next tag tells the reporting engine to move the cursor to the next column (or cell) of the current data band row before inserting the following field value. It enables you to place multiple items from the same data source into separate columns of a single row.

2. Q: How many next tags can I place in one row?
   A: You can use as many next tags as there are columns in the row. Each next advances the cursor by one column, so the number of next tags should not exceed the number of columns you have defined in the table row.

3. Q: Can the next tag be combined with other template tags such as if or foreach?
   A: Yes. The next tag works together with other tags. For example, you can wrap a series of next‑separated fields inside a foreach loop, or place an if condition before a next to output a value only when a condition is met.

4. Q: Why does the next tag sometimes appear to be ignored and all data ends up in the first column?
   A: This usually happens when the table row does not contain enough cells to accommodate the next movements, or when the template syntax is malformed (e.g., missing closing >>). Ensure the HTML table row has a <td> element for each next you use and that all tags are correctly closed. Also verify that the data source actually contains enough items for the loop.