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ActivePDF-like Reports w/ Apache?

Posted by Cliff on from the nice-pretty-graphs-and-pagination dept.

Martin71a asks: "I have recently been tasked with managing our website. I come from a mainframe and VB background and have a team of 3 people to work with. Our manager is having us switch from IIS to an Apache web server later this year. In the more immediate future, I need a solution to distribute print to our customers through our website. Previously, we had developed our reports using HTML, but we need more professional looking reports with more basic printing functionality, such as paging, built in. We have been testing ActivePDF in which we develop the reports in Crystal then use ActivePDF to send [those reports] to a virtual PDF printer, which allows the user to view them. We like the solution because it doesn't require our customer to download anything, other than a PDF viewer. We've also experimented with Crystal Enterprise, although it was an older version that required either a Java plug-in, or ActiveX download. My concern is that AcitvePDF does not appear to be supported for an Apache server. Does any know of a similar solution that would be appropriate for an Apache server?"

5 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:xml(dot)apache(dot)org by Kanagawa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You may want to consider XEP, as well. Its a commercial XSL-FO processor and is much less buggy than FOP. FOP is a great idea, but as of several months ago it wouldn't produce documents I would call "professional". XEP has most of the formatting objects requirements already implemented and seems to work quite well.

    --
    "He wrested the world's whereabouts from the heavens And locked the secret in a pocketwatch." - Dava Sobel
  2. Free print-to-pdf by smoon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Crystal is running the report, then just set up a samba box with printpdf (see this site for some more info.

    Works great. It's free. Infinitely configurable.

    --
    "But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
  3. PDF for web distribution by ratboy666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You don't indicate whether the PDF generation needs to be dynamic.

    In either case, Ghostscript will produce a PDF for you, from a PS (Postscript) data source. A fairly trivial transformation.

    This leaves "printing" to a Postscript printer, which Windows, Unix *and* Mainframe is capable of.

    I assume that since you have (somehow) "outgrown" HTML encoding and features, that you probably need somewhat more advanced formatting than most direct PDF generation libraries will (easily) provide.

    I also assume that you want to reduce furture maintainance. With these two goals in mind, the PS->PDF transformation is most reasonable, giving you the flexibility to choose how to "print" the PS.

    Ratboy.

    --
    Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
  4. JasperReports by aoteoroa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You could use Jasper Reports to design and create reports based on any JDBC datasource.

    To work on your apache server you will need to install apache-tomcat. Of course if you have never programmed in Java you might be better off looking at one of the PHP solutions mentioned elsewhere.

  5. Re:CSS by styrotech · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And it's even possible to control print media page breaks in CSS. Browser support is very spotty, although gecko seems to support most of it fairly well.

    My company makes a web based project management tool, and we got fed up with using 3rd party reporting engines and now just use print media style sheets for printing reports.