Gem for generating .odt files by making strings substitution in a previously created .odt file.
gem install sandrods-odf-report --source=http://gems.github.com
First of all, you need to create a .odt file to serve as a template
Templates are normal .odt files with placeholders for Substitutions
There are two kinds of substitutions available: fields and tables
It’s just an upcase sentence, surrounded by brackets. It will be replaced for wathever value you supply.
In the folowing example:
report = ODFReport.new("Users/john/my_template.odt") do |r| r.add_field :user_name, @user.name r.add_field :address, "My new address" end
All occurences of [USER_NAME]
found in the file will be replaced by the value of @user.name
whereas all [ADDRESS]
’es will contains My new address
It’s as simple as that.
To use table placeholders, you should create a Table in your document and give it a name. In OpenOffice, it’s just a matter of right-clicking the table you just created, choose Table Properties… and type a name in the Name field.
If the table has two rows, the first one will be treated as a header and left untouched. Otherwise you should use a table with one row only.
As with Field placeholders, just insert a [FIELD_NAME]
in each cell and let the magic takes place.
Taking the folowing example:
report = ODFReport.new("Users/john/my_template.odt") do |r| r.add_field "USER_NAME", @user.nome r.add_field "ADDRESS", @user.address r.add_table("TABLE_1", @list_of_itens) do |row, item| row["ITEM_ID"] = item.id row["DESCRIPTION"] = "==> #{item.description}" end end
and considering you have a table like this in your template
---------------------------- | [ITEM_ID] | [DESCRIPTON] | ----------------------------
and a collection @list_of_itens, it will be created one row for each item in the collection, and the replacement will take place accordingly.
Any format applied to the fields in the template will be preserved.
It’s fairly simple to generate the document. You can use this inside a Rails application or in a standalone script.
In a controller, you can have a code like this:
def print report = ODFReport.new("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/reports/ticket.odt") do |r| r.add_field(:id, @ticket.id.to_s) r.add_field(:created_by, @ticket.created_by) r.add_field(:created_at, @ticket.created_at.strftime("%d/%m/%Y - %H:%M")) r.add_field(:type, @ticket.type.name) r.add_field(:status, @ticket.status_text) r.add_field(:date, Time.now.strftime("%d/%m/%Y - %H:%M")) r.add_field(:solution, (@ticket.solution || '')) r.add_table("OPERATORS", @ticket.operators) do | row, op | row["OPERATOR_NAME"] = "#{op.name} (#{op.department.short_name})" end r.add_table("FIELDS", @ticket.fields) do | row, field | if field.is_a?(String) row["FIELD_NAME"] = 'Materials' row["FIELD_VALUE"] = field else row["FIELD_NAME"] = field.name row["FIELD_VALUE"] = field.text_value || '' end end end report_file_name = report.generate send_file(report_file_name) end
The generate
method will, er… generate the document in a temp dir and returns the full path of the generated file, so you can send it back to the user.
That’s all I have to say about that.
It’s just the same as in a Rails app, but you can inform the path where the file will be generated instead of using a temp dir.
report = ODFReport.new("ticket.odt") do |r| ... populates the report ... end report.generate("./documents/")
rubyzip: for manipulating the contents of the odt file, since it’s actually a zip file.