Generating reports

Using the Mako Report Formatter

The Mako report formatter uses the Mako template language for generating reports. More information about Mako and it’s language can be found at makotemplates.org.

The Mako templating system should already be installed on your computerif Bauble is installed.

Creating reports with Mako is similar in the way that you would create a web page from a template. It is much simpler than the XSL Formatter(see below) and should be relatively easy to create template for anyone with a little but of programming experience.

The template generator will use the same file extension as the template which should indicate the type of output the template with create. For example, to generate an HTML page from your template you should name the template something like report.html. If the template will generate a comma seperated value file you should name the template report.csv.

The template will receive a variable called values which will contain the list of values in the current search.

Using the XSL Report Formatter

The XSL report formatter requires an XSL to PDF renderer to convert the data to a PDF file. Apache FOP is is a free and open-source XSL->PDF renderer and is recommended.

If using Linux, Apache FOP should be installable using your package manager. On Debian/Ubuntu it is installable as fop in Synaptic or using the following command:

apt-get install fop

Installing Apache FOP on Windows

1. Download the latest Apache FOP. The current version when this was written is 0.95 and can be downloaded here.
2. Extract the FOP archive to the C drive, i.e. C:
3. Add the directory where you extracted FOP to the PATH environment variable. If you extract FOP to C:add c:fop-0.95 to the path. For more information about setting environment variables and the PATH in Windows XP go here.