Tryton can generate dynamic reports in many formats from report and style templates. The reports are generated in one step as follows: a report template in a special file format, explained later, is interpolated with dynamic data and placed into a document of the same file format. Tryton’s ability to generate documents in this way allows documents to be generated for any editor that supports the Open Document Format which can be converted to third party formats, such as PDF. Extra libraries are required for this, see INSTALL for more information.
Report templates are files with a format supported by relatorio, that contain snippets of the Genshi templating language.
Here is an example of the text that would be placed in an open document text document, *.odt, that displays the full name and the address lines of the first address of each party. The genshi code is placed in the template using Functions->Placeholder->Text Fields. These are specific to ODT files.
<for each="party in objects">
<party.full_name>
<if test="party.addresses">
<for each="line in party.addresses[0].full_address.split('\n')">
<line>
</for>
</if>
</for>
Reports styles let you standardize the header, footer and styles of your templates.
When defining an ir.action.report the following attributes are available:
- name: The name of the report.
- report_name: The name of the report model, for example my_module.my_report. This is the name you would use with Pool().get
- module_name: If this report is of an existing model this is its name. For example my_module.my_model. Custom reports that aren’t of a specific model will need to leave this blank.
- report: The path to the template file starting with the module, for example my_module/my_report.odt.
- style: The path to the style file starting with the module, for example, my_module/my_style.odt. If no style is to be used this field will be blank.
- template_extension: The template format.
If you are creating a report from scratch you should perform the following steps:
Remove user data
- “File > Properties...”
- Uncheck “Apply user data”
- Click on “Reset”
Select Style and Formatting
- Press F11 or “Format > Style and Formatting”
- Click on the drop down at the right top
- Select “Load Styles”
- Click on “From File...”
- Select a existing report (company/header_A4.odt)
Set some parameters
- Set the zoom to 100% (View>Zoom)
- Set the document in read-only mode
(Tools>Options>OpenOffice.org>Security) (Decreases the time it takes to open the document.)
Usage
- Use Liberation fonts (Only necessary if being officially included in Tryton)
- Try to use styles in report templates so that they can be extended in report styles.
The genshi code is placed in the template using Functions->Placeholder->Text Fields. These are specific to *.odt files and can be found in the open office menu at Insert -> Fields -> Other and then Functions -> Placeholder -> Text. Type genshi code into the Placeholder field. There are alternatives for embedding genshi that are supported by relatorio but their use is not encouraged within Tryton.
Also note that relatorio only supports a subset of genshi. The directives that are supported by relatorio can be found here: Quick Example .
See genshi’s documentation for more information: Genshi XML Templates
The modules company, account_invoice and stock all contain helpful examples.
Also see relatorio’s site for some examples:
By default instances of the models the report is for are passed in to the report via a list of objects called objects. These objects behave just as they would within trytond itself. You can access any of the models relations as well. For example within the invoice report each object is an invoice and you can access the name of the party of the invoice via invoice.party.name. Additional objects can be passed to a report. This is discussed below in Passing custom data to a report.
Within Tryton the underlying model the report can be found by following the Menu to Administration > UI > Actions > Report. Furthermore in tryton the fields for that model can be found by following the menu to Administration > Model > Model. Model relation fields can be accessed to any depth, for example, one could access invoice.party.addresses to get a list of addresses for the party of an invoice.
TODO: Explain the steps necessary to do this.
Less work has to be done if you just want a simple report representation of a model. There are just 2 steps. First, create a report template file in a format supported by relatorio. Second, describe your report in XML making sure to define the correct report_name and module_name.
To replace an existing report you must deactivate the old report and activate the new report.
For example to deactivate the invoice report:
<record model="ir.action.report" id="account_invoice.report_invoice">
<field name="active" eval="False"/>
</record>
Then you must activate the new invoice report that exists in your new module:
<record model="ir.action.report" id="report_invoice_new">
<field name="name">Invoice</field>
<field name="report_name">account.invoice</field>
<field name="model">account.invoice</field>
<field name="report">my_module/invoice.odt</field>
<field name="style">module_name/header_A4.odt</field>
<field name="template_extension">odt</field>
</record>
TODO: Examples of overriding Report.execute.
In this example Report.parse is overridden and an employee object is set into context. Now the invoice report will be able to access the employee object.
class InvoiceReport(Report):
_name = 'account.invoice'
def parse(self, report, objects, datas, localcontext):
employee_obj = Pool().get('company.employee')
employee = False
if Transaction().context.get('employee'):
employee = employee_obj.browse(Transaction().context['employee'])
localcontext['employee'] = employee
return super(InvoiceReport, self).parse(report, objects, datas,
localcontext)
InvoiceReport()
TODO: Explanation of how to override ir.report.get_style_content to change the default style.