Rails view: Export to pdf

This method exports html views in PDF using the exact same CSS and HTML you display on your site. This means that you don't need an extra effort in reformating everything to look nice on a PDF file.

This tutorial is mainly based on the method described by Jim Neath (site) with the necessary windows tweak.

1. Install

Download and install PrinceXML

Install the princely plugin (interface between Prince and rails)

script/plugin install git://github.com/mbleigh/princely.git


2. Tweaking for Windows

The following trick is necessary to make it work under Windows.

Change the path of the application in the file \vendor\plugins\princely\lib\prince.rb with the following line :

@exe_path = "C:\\Program Files\\Prince\\Engine\\bin\\prince" .chomp

the old line was : @exe_path = `which prince`.chomp

Add

pdf.binmode #this is new

under the line where you see:

pdf = IO.popen(path, "w+")

That should be ok after this.

3. Usage

In your views:

Copy the view you want to print, modify it to display only what you want to print (using CSS and HTML like a normal view) and rename it (example : show.pdf.erb instead of show.html.erb)

In your controller:

edit the corresponding action to add a new render method for the PDF file

# GET /post/1
# GET /post/1.xml
def show
@post = Post.find(params[:id])

respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.html.erb
format.xml { render :xml => @post }
format.pdf do
render :pdf => "filename", :stylesheets => ["application", "prince"], :layout => "pdf"
end
end
end


That's it

When you call, /posts/show/5.pdf you get a pdf file of the record id you have called.
In my example, the record id was 5.

More information
Thanks to mikedc55 for the tweak on windows.

Rails view: Export to csv

A simple and efficient export of a view to a csv file can be achieved by following these steps:

1. Install

install the following gems:

gem install fastercsv
gem install crafterm-comma --source=http://gems.github.com


2. Usage

In your controller, add:

class PostsController < ApplicationController

# GET /posts
# GET /posts.xml
# GET /posts.csv
def index
@posts= Posts.find(:all)

respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.html.erb
format.xml { render :xml => @posts}
format.csv { render :csv => @posts}
end
end

In your model, add:

# ===============
# = CSV support =
# ===============
comma do # implicitly named :default


field_to_display_1
field_to_display_2
field_to_display_3
field_to_display_4
field_to_display_5
field_to_display_6

end

In your view, add a link to the file:

the text is for example "Export to Excel" and the target of the link is /posts.csv

Rails will see the different extension and choose the appropriate render method from your controller.


3. That's it

When you click on the "Export to excel" link in the view you will get a CSV file. Depending on your browser settings, it will open in MS Excel or ask you where to save it.

from there, you can extrapolate and add params to the view.

More information

Ext JS 3.0 and rails

Ext JS 3.0, the javascript framework, is now reaching beta 2 with a REST support. This could play along quite well with rails.

Go check it out here

Questions on SQL Server adapter

Just a brief post to note that there is a specific discussion group on SQL Server adapter in rails here.

Learning Ext JS

Packt Publishing recently published a new book Learning Ext JS

This book is well written and examples are easy to follow. although they are using PHP for most of the examples, it is fairly easy to convert to rails. It is a very good and time saving introduction to the Ext JS framework before digging into the official documentation.

Ext Scaffold returns

In a previous post, I spoke about Ext Js scaffolding with the plugin written by Martin Rehfeld

The exact description is the following :

The Ext Scaffold Generator Plugin is a drop-in replacement for Rails’ standard Scaffold Generator. Accepting the very same options, it will generate views using data grid and form components from the Ext JS Javascript GUI framework as well as a controller acting as an Ext-compatible JSON web service. The generated code can be used as a starting point for further implementation and outlines solutions on how to integrate the Ext JS library with Rails as a backend.

you can now find the plugin on github

and install it in your application like this :

ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/martinrehfeld/ext_scaffold.git

More info on GL Network

The advantage of this new version is that all actions happen in the same window (in your index view). The javascript code is now explicit and does not use magic helpers anymore. This is a great improvement. It allows an easy customization of the code and is a great resource to learn how to interact with the Ext JS framework and rails. It also facilitates integration in your current application.

New rails 2.2.Sql Server adapter

There is a new SQL-Server adapter for active-record. The new features are the following :

- Enabled support for DDL transactions.
- Micro second support. Time#usec is automatically converted to SQL Server's 3.33 millisecond limitation.
- Datetime data types before type casting are represented correctly. For example: 1998-01-01 23:59:59.997
- Implementation for #disable_referential_integrity used by ActiveRecord's Fixtures class.
- Pessimistic locking suppot. See the #add_lock! method for details.
- Enabled #case_sensitive_equality_operator used by unique validations.
- Unicode character support for nchar, nvarchar and ntext data types.
- View support for table names, identity inserts, and column defaults.

to install it :

gem install rails-sqlserver-2000-2005-adapter -s http://gems.github.com

More info on article on railsinside.com or get the code on git

Update : After some tests I can confirm it does not function with SQL Server 2008, so stick to the normal adapter mentionned in my previous post if you are running SQL Server 2008 if you want to avoid the nice message saying "Currently only 2000 and 2005 are supported". Somehow frustrating if you have 2008 !

New Update : It seems that there is a workaround ! You can play with the constant SUPPORTED_VERSIONS by adding 2008 to it. The reason why it is not officially supported is that the author would like to rewrite the code to take advantage of the new features of SQL Server 2008. I can only thank him for this idea, let's hope the wait won't be too long !

By the way, this adapter is now also tested and improved for rails 2.3.2