jsanders-ruport

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Contents:

+ What Ruport Is

+ Installation

+ Resources

+ Hacking

= What Ruport Is

Ruby Reports (Ruport) is an extensible reporting system.

It aims to be as lightweight as possible while still providing core support

for data aggregation and manipulation as well as multi-format rendering

of reports.

Ruport provides tools for using a number of data sources, including CSV files,

ActiveRecord models, and raw SQL connections via RubyDBI (through ruport-util).

Data manipulation is easy as there are standard structures that support

record, table, and grouping operations. These all can be extended to

implement custom behavior as needed.

For common tasks, Ruport provides formatters for CSV, HTML, PDF, and text-

based reports. However, the real power lies in building custom report

controllers and formatters. The base formatting libraries provide a number

of helper functions that will let you build complex reports while maintaining

a DRY and consistent interface.

To get a quick feel for what you can accomplish with Ruport, take a look at

a few simple examples provided on our web site.

http://rubyreports.org/examples.html

Since Ruport's core support is intentionally minimalistic, you may be looking

for some higher level support for specific needs such as graphing, invoices,

report mailing support, etc. For this, you may wish to take a look at the

ruport-util package, which contains some generally useful tools and libraries

to extend Ruport's capabilities.

= Installation

To install ruport via rubygems:

sudo gem install ruport

Check to see if it installed properly:

ruby -rubygems -e "require 'ruport'; puts Ruport::VERSION"

If you get an error, please let us know on our mailing list.

Dependencies Details:

-- formatting

Ruport relies on PDF::Writer and FasterCSV for its formatting support.

If you want to make use of textile helpers, you'll also need RedCloth.

-- database interaction

If you wish to use Ruport to report against a rails project,

a camping project, or do standalone acts_as_reportable reports, you'll need

ActiveRecord and the acts_as_reportable gem.

If you want to use Ruport::Query for raw SQL support, you'll need to

install ruport-util, RubyDBI and whatever database drivers you might need.

= Resources

Our developers have published a free-content book about all things

Ruport, including complete coverage of acts_as_reportable and some of

ruport-util's features. This book serves as the definitive guide to

Ruport, so all users should become acquainted with it:

http://ruportbook.com

The next best way to get help and make suggestions is the Ruport mailing list.

This software is on the move, so the list is the most reliable way of getting

up to date information.

- You can sign up and/or view the archives here:

http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-reports

If you are looking to dig a little deeper, there are a couple more resources

that may be helpful to you.

- The latest stable API documentation is available at:

http://api.rubyreports.org

- Our Trac is at: http://code.rubyreports.org/ruport

You may use the username ruport and password blinky to file tickets.

= Hacking

If you'd like to contribute code to Ruport, please join our development

mailing list, and let us know what you'd like to do!

http://groups.google.com/group/ruport-dev

It also may be worthwhile to join this list if you plan on running edge

versions of Ruport, as this is where we make announcements about major

breakage in trunk.

We are very responsive to contributors, and review every patch we receive

fairly quickly. Most contributors who successfully get a patch or two applied

are given write access to the repositories and invited to join Ruport's

development team. Since we view every user as potential contributor, this

approach works well for us.

So if you want to help out with Ruport, we'll happy accept your efforts!