Re: RPGCGI - Convert HTML page to PDF

It is on my TODO as well.

Isn't that how it works already (without the RPG and data queues)? In my RPG Report Generator, I am using the standard WYSIWYG (iReport) designer and then Jasper standalone or server handles the data merge. My plan is (and I need to do this by the time I present at Common) to offer the same functionality with BIRT as well but I haven't explored the nuances (yet).

The session will cover the following (hopefully):

Running a Jasper Report from RPG (Already done in RRE v 0.4.1 download it here: http://www.opensource4i.com/downloads/2008042811495836/rrepackage.zip )
Running a Jasper Report from RPG using Jasper Server (data queuing I think)
Running a BIRT Report from RPG
Running a BIRT Report from RPG using a server model (data queuing I think)
Running iText from RPG.

The plan is to provide wrappers for all of the main functions of the report generators (BIRT and iText..Jasper is done) and make them accessible from RPG. Then I'll provide a series of samples along with a database and API documentation.

That, at least, is what will be available by May 3rd. If you make progress before then and wouldn't mind sharing, that might help move me along. I have a project that I need to jump on this for by the middle of May so I some economic incentive to get it all working....

Pete


Aaron Bartell wrote:

On my TODO list is to integrate a BIRT created template and make it
occupiable (new word?) by RPG through calling Java from a data queue. This
would allow business users to create a report using a graphical tool, with
named variable placeholders, and then an RPG programmer would write a
program that feeds a canned Java program the values for the variables and
the Java would communicate with the BIRT template (which is Java based I
believe).

In the end an approach like that would be better fitting vs. risking odd
transformations of a HTML to PDF approach like you and Scott are mentioning.

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog/


On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Simon Coulter
Umm ... maybe it's just me but why would you do it this way? Surely
the correct approach is to build the PDF from the original data not
try to convert HTML to PDF.

It may help if someone were to speak up about generating PDF files
directly. If I recall correctly the API offered by RJS seems rather complex
when it came to absolute positioning and & GUI formatting.

I really like externally defined CSS and Dreamweaver for HTML formatting,
and transforming HTML templates to stream files, using variable substitution
with RPG. So much easier. CSS, in particular can be applied to all types
of reports - simply by reference.

-Nathan.




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