tommeier-dynamic_reports

= Dynamic Reports

A dynamic reporting engine for Ruby / Rails

== Reports

The dynamic reports gem was created to fill a HUGE hole that we felt existed in the Ruby community - the ability to QUICKLY create stylized admin reports and charts for people to use to view key metrics and data.

Sample uses include the ability to quickly display sales data if your an eShop, our site metrics if you are recording your own site visits, or user feedback if you are storing feedback in a model somewhere.

Basically, with DR you can create a stylized table of ANY information found in a model (kind of like looking at the grid output from a GUI query analyzer) as well as add Google Charts API powered line, pie, bar or column charts of any numeric data. All this can be done by simply creating a report definition and feeding it your data.

While this library is usable in any Ruby application it was made mainly with Rails in mind. Suppose we have an online store and we wish to add reporting to the admin area quickly and easily. First we define a report in app/reports/orders_report.rb, something like:

class OrdersReport < DynamicReports::Report
  title "Orders Report"
  sub_title "All orders recorded in database"
  columns :total, :created_at
end

Then in our admin/reports controller (this can be any controller) we define an action to deliver the report:

def orders
  @orders = Order.find(:all, :limit => 25)
  render :text => OrdersReport.on(@orders).to_html, :layout => "application"
end

This will render an html table containing some basic styling and containing the columns 'total' and 'created_at' from the order objects. Note that the report Title will be "Orders Report" and it's name will be :orders_report Report#on expects that it receives an object that responds to #each and That each object that it iterates over is either a * An object * A Hash that responds to a method / has keys for each column defined within the report.

Templating engines may also be specified, currently :erb and :haml are supported (we will soon be adding :csv and :pdf) like so:

  render :text => OrdersReport.on(@orders).to_html(:engine => :haml), :layout => "application"

Note that erb is the default templating engine since it is available by default in Ruby.

Now let us extend our report definition to specify a template to use!

class OrdersReport < DynamicReports::Report
  title "Orders Report"
  sub_title "All orders recorded in database"
  columns :total, :created_at

  template :my_custom_template
end

This will look in app/views/reports/ for a template named "my_custom_template.html.erb" by default. If you specify :engine => :haml then it will look for "my_custom_template.html.haml"

If you happen to have your report templates in a different location you can specify this as follows:

class OrdersReport < DynamicReports::Report
   title "Orders Report"
  sub_title "All orders recorded in database"
  columns :total, :created_at

  template :my_custom_template
  views "app/views/admin/reports/"
end

And DynamicReports will look for the specified template in app/views/reports as well as app/views/admin/reports.

It is also worth pointing out that you can have as many dynamic reports in a view as you wish, simply include each report render where desired within the view.

== Charts

Charts can be defined on a report easily. Let's say we wish to chart the total versus the item quantity sold for our Orders Report exmaple:

class OrdersReport < DynamicReports::Report
  title "Orders Report"
  sub_title "All orders recorded in database"
  columns :total, :created_at

  chart :total_vs_quantity do
    columns :total, :quantity
    label_column "created_at"
  end
end

This will render a line chart by default displaying the columns total and quantity. Chart types may be specified easily:

    type :bar

Available chart types are:

* :line (default)
* :bar
* :pie

Since DynamicReport's charts utilize the Google Chart API, you can easily extend each chart by passing a hash of chart options as part of the block. The options are appended onto the request to the API so they should follow the Google's API commands (http://code.google.com/apis/chart/)

For example, to add min, max and average labels to the example chart, you would do something like this:

chart :total_vs_quantity, {:chxt => "r", :chxl => "0:|min|average|max"} do
    columns :total, :quantity
    label_column "created_at"
end

== Stylizing

The reports are, by default, stylized with an inline style sheet. The styles produce a nicely formatted grid with a white on black header row and black on white columns with a gray border througout.

You can create your own styles by simply adding a class_name object to the report definition as such:

class OrdersReport < DynamicReports::Report
  title "Orders Report"
  sub_title "All orders recorded in database"
  columns :total, :created_at

  class_name "my_class_name"
end

This will cause DR to simply not include the inline style. From there you can customer the styles using the following sub-classes for your class name, for example:

.my_class_name .report_title {}
.my_class_name .report_subtitle {}
.my_class_name table tr th {}
.my_class_name table tr td {}
.my_class_name .report_charts {}        // all charts are displayed within this div
.my_class_name .report_chart {}         // represents an individual chart

== Rails Usage

Inside the initializer block in config/environment.rb

config.gem "dynamic_reports"

Then define your reports (as exampled above) in app/reports/_report.rb If you would like to customize the default report simply create your report templates within app/views/reports/_report...

Two Rails features that we are currently working on are:

* generator
* render extensions

== Optional Dependencies

We are currently examining solutions for csv, pdf and charting.

* Fastercsv     # csv
* Prawn         # pdf
* flying saucer # html => PDF - if jRuby available
* amcharts      # Charting, note that default is built in google charts.

These will be defined/implemented using DynamicReports plugin API (not implemented yet) Which allows for user defined plugins of arbitrary types beyond html,csv,pdf,xml

== Contact / Feedback

If you have any suggestions on improvement please send us an email.

== Authors (alphabetically)

Joshua Lippiner ([e-mail])

Wayne E. Seguin ([e-mail], irc: wayneeseguin)

== Thanks To

• Daniel Neighman
• Kenneth Kalmer (And his friend :))
• Yehuda Katz

For their encouragement, feedback and advise.

== Source http://github.com/wayneeseguin/dynamic_reports