Hi, I'm planning to migrate a desktop app from Delphi to fcl-web, and one important aspect of it, is the reporting engine. This app has many reports created with FastReport 4, and I want to let the new app generate PDFs on the fly.

If this is not possible, what do you recommend to create PDF reports from Lazarus/FPC?

I researched this myself, but there is no clear answer.

It certainly depends on the platform. Linux/Windows ? On Linux, the existing reporting engines rely on an X-server, which is not very good for a web application. (our servers have no X installed). For example, some people seem to have FastReport 4 running in FPC, so this is good, but requires X and is not suitable for a webserver.

Michael.

Odd, I asked about this before and was told x was not required.

--- El lun 23-ago-10, Lee Jenkins escribi?:

LazReport reports can be exported to PDF with PowerPDF addon, see lazreport/source/addons/pdfexport. This can of course be done programmatically

LazReport cannot import FastReport reports that I know.

PowerPDF can be used standalone and it doesn't need X or anything else.

Jesus Reyes A.

El lun, 23-08-2010 a las 15:44 -0700, Jesus Reyes escribi?:

Interesting to know that, I'll try PowerPDF. If that doesn't work, I'll have to re-create the reports in Latex source, then generate the PDFs.

Lee Jenkins wrote

Odd, I asked about this before and was told x was not required.

Of course it is. The LCL requires X.

The low-level powerpdf does not, but this is not a reporting engine.

Michael.

Have you considered using Xvfb as minimal X-Server without visual output ? I use this in combination with wine to run Windows Service-Applications developed in Delphi (which haven't been ported to fpc yet) on our linux server and it works fine.

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Adrian Veith wrote

Have you considered using Xvfb as minimal X-Server without visual output ? I use this in combination with wine to run Windows Service-Applications developed in Delphi (which haven't been ported to fpc yet) on our linux server and it works fine.

I could do this, and I could put VNC as well. But I don't want that: a web-application (or indeed any service application) should not have dependencies on a GUI; this is a matter of design principle.

The same goes for a reporting engine. The core of the engine should be totally free of GUI dependencies. I know only 2 engines which satisfy this requirement: JasperReports and Morfik's reporting engine. (those are the ones which I know, this doesn't mean there are no other ones).

Michael.

My original post on 2010/3/17:

Jesus Reyes' response:

the basic unit of lazreport is lr_class:

unit LR_Class;
interface
{$I LR_Vers.inc}

uses
SysUtils, Classes, MaskUtils, Controls, FileUtil, Forms, ComCtrls, Dialogs, Menus, Variants, DB, Graphics, Printers, osPrinters, DOM, XMLRead, XMLConf, LCLType, LCLIntf, TypInfo, LCLProc,{$IFDEF UNIX}SysUtilsAdds,{$ENDIF} LR_View, LR_Pars,

   LR_Intrp, LR_DSet, LR_DBSet, LR_DBRel, LR_Const;

As you can see, this includes a lot of the LCL units, and they depend on X through the widgetset.

Yes, I know about the no_gui widgetset, but if you use that, you'll get a bunch of errors because of missing functionality (pagewidth/height missing or zero, no font info etc.).

Lazreport inherited from fastreport a totally misplaced dependency on the GUI, unfortunately :/

For desktop apps, this is perfectly OK. But not for web apps.

Michael.

Michael Van Canneyt pisze:

You can use a combination of powerpdf with pascal script and a set of intermediate helper classes.

Boguslaw

That is definitely an option.

Michael.

OK. The reporting engine itself requires LCL and not just the preview/viewer portions. Make sense, being based on FreeReport which didn't make sense to abstract out the engine because Windows<->GUI is always there.

PowerPDF is pretty decent otherwise.

Thanks Michael,

Estimado Reyes:

como siempre, mis mejores deseos para usted y su familia.

casi me doy por vencido. he leido no menos de 20 veces la documentacion del lazreport, pero no encuentro donde esta mi error.

le estoy adjuntado un problema peque?o que hize para ver si trabajaba bien, pero nada. Me cuesta trabajo escribir el total en el Summary Report. (mejor dicho, no lo logro).

espero que para usted, sin apuro, cuando pueda, le tire un vistazo al problemita y me diga como resolverlo.

saludos,

Ing. H?ctor F. Fiandor Rosario

Estimado Reyes:

ante todo mis saludos.

ya logre algo mejor que lo anterior.
leo un fichero de datos, llevo la informacion a un Record y despues hago el Reporte.
no se dar el Eof y tuve que agregar un fantasma para que trabajara bien

pero no se obtener la suma al final del reporte.

quisiera aprender mas para escribir lo aprendido y si le sirve a alguien, que no pase tanto trabajo como yo. que si no fuera por su ayuda, estaria frito.

saludos y le pido mil perdones, recuerde que no hay apuro.

Ing. H?ctor F. Fiandor Rosario