generating PDF's via code - looking for ideas

[CS DBA]

Hi All;

I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
method based on a template.

We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then open
the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our first stab
generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable method. So,
I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as described above.
Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 09:54:17 -0600,
  list user  wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
> database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.
>
> We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
> process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then open
> the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our first stab
> generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable method. So,
> I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as described above.
> Anyone have any ideas?

I have seen projects (e.g. Postgres) use a docbook tool chain for building
pdf documents. Would that be a usable approach for you?

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

On 09/30/2010 11:54 AM, list user wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in
> a database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.

...
> method. So, I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as
> described above. Anyone have any ideas?

We use perl scripts to generate an html file, which is easy to do.

Then we convert the html to PDF on-the-fly with htmldoc.

It actually works quite well.

- Mike

[Michael Hennebry]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, list user wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
> database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.

One can generate postscript with printf.
In the pre-pdf days,
that was how I made the diagrams for my masters thesis.
genps | ps2pdf > output.pdf

[Scott Karlin]

On 09/30/10 11:54, list user wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in
> a database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.
>
> We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
> process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then
> open the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our
> first stab generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable
> method. So, I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as
> described above. Anyone have any ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance

Check out ReportLab:
http://www.reportlab.com/software/opensource/

Scott

[Kwan Lowe]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:54 AM, list user  wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
> database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.
>
> We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
> process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then open
> the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our first stab
> generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable method. So,
> I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as described above.
> Anyone have any ideas?

This was a thread in our local LUG:
http://www.flux.org/pipermail/linux/2009-April/021247.html

I use a similar process to generate a text file that gets passed
through a script to generate a PDF report..

[Fedora] generating PDF's via code - looking for ideas

[Walter Cazzola]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, list user wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
> database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.
> We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
> process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then open
> the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our first stab
> generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable method. So,
> I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as described above.
> Anyone have any ideas?

could you try exceltex+pdflatex. Both on CTAN

exceltex is a perl script plus a latex
style that permits to get values from an excel spreadsheet and pretty
printing as you prefer.

HTH

Walter

[Patrick Kobly]

Depends on the languages you can work with and what level of control 
you need

Jasperreports - jasperforge.org is an appropriate solution in the Java world
BIRT - http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/ - also provides reporting 
tools in the Java world
PHP offers bindings for PDFlib (not really cheap)
FPDF - www.fpdf.org and TCPDF - www.tcpdf.org are free PHP libraries for 
producing PDFs

PK

On 9/30/2010 12:19 PM, Kwan Lowe wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:54 AM, list user  wrote:
> > Hi All;
> >
> > I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in a
> > database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> > method based on a template.
> >
> > We tried to do this via open office&  it's templating features but this
> > process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then open
> > the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our first stab
> > generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable method. So,
> > I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as described above.
> > Anyone have any ideas?
>
> This was a thread in our local LUG:
> http://www.flux.org/pipermail/linux/2009-April/021247.html
>
> I use a similar process to generate a text file that gets passed
> through a script to generate a PDF report..

[Bill Davidsen]

list user wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in
> a database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> method based on a template.
>
> We tried to do this via open office & it's templating features but this
> process requires us to first generate an odt file based on xml and then
> open the open office odt file and export to a PDF, unfortunately our
> first stab generated a 150GB odt file. This is of course an unacceptable
> method. So, I'm looking for a way to generate PDF's straight away as
> described above. Anyone have any ideas?

It depends on how good you want them to look. Assuming that "readable" is the 
goal, generate HTML and use html2ps | pstopdf out the output end. The nice thing 
is the HTML is generally useful for reports by itself, so win-win.

If you want presentation quality, start learning troff. I wrote hundreds of 
pages in troff, "back when," and it is great at text to beautiful. Not a skill 
in high demand, and there are other things. Knuth would tell you that TeX is the 
one to use.

[Genes MailLists]

On 10/17/2010 06:47 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> list user wrote:
> > Hi All;
> >
> > I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in
> > a database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> > method based on a template.

Haven't used it but this may work for you:

http://sphinx.pocoo.org/

[Genes MailLists]

On 10/17/2010 06:55 PM, Genes MailLists wrote:
> On 10/17/2010 06:47 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> > list user wrote:
> > > Hi All;
> > >
> > > I'm looking for a way to generate a PDF report based on a set of data in
> > > a database and a set of pre-generated graphs via some sort of procedural
> > > method based on a template.
>
> Haven't used it but this may work for you:
>
> http://sphinx.pocoo.org/

I am also told that reportlab may be useful and possibly, tho a little
raw, sphinxlab.

gene/