Visual Report Writer and The Web (X)
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, 9-Jun-2013 at 04:59 AM (19673 Views)
In this tenth blog about Visual Report Writer and the Web I want to take you to the next four reports that can be found at the Live Demo website (European Server, USA server) grouped under Wines. If this is the first blog you read I encourage you to read the nine other blogs (1: The Solution, 2: Invoices Report, 3: The Cleanup, 4: The CustomerList, 5: The Orderlist, 6: The Credit and Balances Overview), 7: Inventory Stock Levels), 8: Sick Leave) and 9: FileList (RDS)). Meanwhile we have been able to release the Alpha II version of Visual Report Writer 3.0 and the 2.1+ Library only setup. The latter one is needed to make the web reporting using the 17.1 DataFlex Web Framework easy and look like at the demo website.
The Reports
There are four in this part of the demo and this blog to be discussed. All reports were created to show special features such as the use of vertical lines (border) and dynamic and static images in a report. The wines listing by year and by type reports - can be viewed under Wines (JPEG) - are converted reports from the Wines example that is part of the Visual DataFlex product since 1995. The other two reports wines grouped by vintner and list of vintners with logo are more simple reports. The shipped wines example does not come with the images shown in this live example and to avoid potential copyright problems we bought the images for use in this example only (hence the watermark).
Integration
Four reports... so four report views? No, the reports are shown in two views and selectable via either a radiogroup or a drop-down control. Both views do not have selection criteria for the end-user so what is special on the integration? It is the fact that the output of the reports is not a PDF, not HTML but the pages are individual JPEG or GIF images grouped together via the same javascript control used to display the HTML based reports (Sick Leave and FileList).
The report selection is different too but it is not very complex.
Wines (JPEG)
This report view uses a radiogroup with two radio object for the report selection.
The report output generation can be started via the "Run Report" tool-bar button or by clicking the other radio in the radiogroup. In both cases a message ShowReport is send to the viewer control.Code:Object oChoicesContainer is a cWebCardContainer Set pbShowCaption to True Set pbShowBorder to True Object oReportChoiceGroup is a cWebCard Set psCaption to "Wines Report By" Set piColumnCount to 2 Object oByTypeRadio is a cWebRadio Set psCaption to "By Type" Set psRadioValue to "T" Set piColumnSpan to 1 Set piColumnIndex to 0 Set pbServerOnSelect to True Procedure OnSelect Send ShowReport of oViewer End_Procedure End_Object Object oByYearRadio is a cWebRadio Set psCaption to "By Year" Set piColumnIndex to 1 Set piColumnSpan to 1 Set psRadioValue to "Y" Set pbServerOnSelect to True Procedure OnSelect Send ShowReport of oViewer End_Procedure End_Object End_Object End_Object
The viewer control has a property set that tells it to request image download links. The viewer control can also (as seen before) request for a HTML stream (string). In this report view the message GenerateDownloadLinks is send to the report object. The message should return an array of strings holding download paths to the image files. For each of the report pages ONE image file is generated.
To generate a page as image a variable of the VRWImageExportOptions type needs to be created and the members have to be set. One of the members is the image type (TIFF, JPEG, GIF). Only TIFF output supports multi-page which means that the member bMultiPage must be set to false for this report. Instead the iPage member needs to be set to the page number that needs to be exported to the image file. Where the first two members can be set statically the page member will be set in a loop. Finally the code needs to construct a page name for each file and the code below uses the RandomHexUUID function (present in the 17.1 web framework and discussed in Create a New Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) blog I wrote in 2011). The file will be created (like the PDF) in the Cache folder, sub-folder of the Reports folder.
For each of the generated files a download link will be generated only available for the current session. The viewer will show the image in a page controlled way.Code:Function GenerateDownloadLinks Returns String[] String sReportChoice sReportId sCacheFolder sHEXUUID sBaseName String[] sFileNames VRWImageExportOptions ImageExportOptions Integer iPages iPage iElement WebGet psValue of oByTypeRadio to sReportChoice Case Begin Case (sReportChoice = 'T') Set psReportName to "WineInventoryByType.vrw" Case Break Case (sReportChoice = 'Y') Set psReportName to "WineInventoryByYear.vrw" Case Break Case End Get OpenReport to sReportId If (sReportId <> "") Begin Get ReportPageCount to iPages Move (ResizeArray (sFileNames, iPages)) to sFileNames Get ReportsCacheFolder to sCacheFolder Get RandomHexUUID to sHEXUUID Move (sCacheFolder + sHEXUUID) to sBaseName Move C_VRWJPEG to ImageExportOptions.iImageType Move False to ImageExportOptions.bMultiPage For iPage from 1 to iPages Move iPage to ImageExportOptions.iPage Set pImageExportOptions to ImageExportOptions Move (Sformat ("%1-Page%2.jpg", sBaseName, iPage)) to sFileNames[iElement] Send ExportReport C_VRWImage sFileNames[iElement] Get DownloadURL of ghoWebResourceManager sFileNames[iElement] to sFileNames[iElement] Increment iElement Loop Send CloseReport sReportId End Function_Return sFileNames End_Function
The path to the static image in the two report is passed to the report via a parameter. The image is stored in the same folder as the report. When this demo site gets updated to use Visual Report Writer 3.0 the following code can be removed as 3.0 supports embedded images.
Wines (GIF)Code:Procedure OnInitializeReport String sReportLocation Integer iParameter Get psReportLocation to sReportLocation Get ParameterIdByName C_USEMAINVRWREPORTID 'ImagePath' to iParameter Set psParameterValue C_USEMAINVRWREPORTID iParameter to sReportLocation End_Procedure
The second report view in this example generates the output as individual GIF files. The report selection is done from a drop-down control. Where the report selection from a radio was code in a case structure in GenerateDownloadLinks the drop-down let me specifiy the report name as the data element of each combo-item.
Where the many of the other report-views use a button in a tool-bar to start the report output this report-view uses a standard cWebButton object. The location is directly next the drop-down control. The message send by the button is the same as from the tool-bar button (ShowReport).Code:Object oReportSelectorCombo is a cWebCombo Set psLabel to "Select Report" Set piColumnSpan to 8 Set psEmptyItemDescription to "Select a Report" Procedure OnFill Send AddComboItem "Wine Bottles Grouped by Vintner.vrw" "Wine Bottles Grouped By Vintner" Send AddComboItem "List of Vintners With Logo.vrw" "List of Vintners With Logo" End_Procedure End_Object
In the GenerateDownLoadLinks the report to be opened is retrieved from the drop-down control via the psValue property.
The GIF output reports print a logo file per vintner. The logos are present in a folder vintners inside the AppHtml folder. For each vintner two files are created, a larger and smaller one. The larger is used in the cWebView for the vintner table and the small one for the report. The folder where these images are stored in is passed via a parameter to the report. The code to set the parameter is as follows.Code:WebGet psValue of oReportSelectorCombo to sReportChoice Set psReportName to sReportChoice
This concludes the 10th blog about Visual Report Writer and the web. I hope I have been able to learn you a couple of more features available in Visual Report Writer and in the Visual DataFlex Web Framework.Code:Procedure OnInitializeReport Handle hoWorkspace String sAppHtmlPaths sAppHtmlPath sFolder Integer iPaths iPath iParameter Boolean bIsFolder Get phoWorkspace of ghoApplication to hoWorkspace Get psAppHtmlPath of hoWorkspace to sAppHtmlPaths Get CountOfPaths of hoWorkspace sAppHtmlPaths to iPaths For iPath from 1 to iPaths Get PathAtIndex of hoWorkspace sAppHtmlPaths iPath to sAppHtmlPath If (Right (sAppHtmlPath, 1) <> SysConf (SYSCONF_DIR_SEPARATOR)) Begin Move (sAppHtmlPath - SysConf (SYSCONF_DIR_SEPARATOR)) to sAppHtmlPath End Move (sAppHtmlPath - "Vintners\") to sFolder Move (VRW_WinAPI_PathIsDirectory (AddressOf (sFolder))) to bIsFolder If (bIsFolder) Begin Get ParameterIdByName C_USEMAINVRWREPORTID 'ImagePath' to iParameter Set psParameterValue C_USEMAINVRWREPORTID iParameter to sFolder Move iPaths to iPath End Loop End_Procedure