Renaming a Report prior to presentation

kklosson

Is it possible to rename a report prior to presentation? It would be preferred to give the name of my report the subject name of the person, something like that. I know how easy it is to save the report under a different name, but I would like to be able to set the report name and standardize the naming convention.

Maybe some java script that someone could write for me?

tford

Will this help?

kklosson

It does, but here is my quest in detail:

I have about 5 reports that I want to combine into 1. Easy you say, just embed each report into a master report. Unfortunately, each of the reports is already a master report - one has about 20 reports embedded already. Still this works, but two show-stoppers:

The Jasper engine tends to lose its grasp on where the bottom of the page is and with each page, the footer lands higher and higher, at about 1/32" increments. I've never been able to out trick it.
I can't find a way to force a new page for each report.

So if you are a genius on these issues, chime in please.

An option I am pursuing now is to Export the reports to a folder and use a PDF Combine utility (which provides other nice features like bookmarking the internal documents). This works and requires the concepts you linked to.

Even with this option, I have trouble with names. My documents exports to long-winded temp file names, though the doc's say they will export to the template name, and it's difficult to reference them in order to control the inclusion order and such.

So that's what I'm up to if you have any thoughts.

tford

An option I am pursuing now is to Export the reports to a folder and use a PDF Combine utility (which provides other nice features like bookmarking the internal documents). This works and requires the concepts you linked to.

Even with this option, I have trouble with names. My documents exports to long-winded temp file names, though the doc's say they will export to the template name, and it's difficult to reference them in order to control the inclusion order and such.

If you pursue this approach, doesn't the file naming link I referenced earlier address the "long winded temp file names" issue?

I'm fascinated by the PDF Combine tool if you get this to work. Would love ot know more.

kklosson

Tom,

In your examples in the referenced post, what are you using for a file path on the server that can be written to by the AwareIM server and access via a URL?

tford

I know it was stored in SystemSettings.DisplayURLPrefix_Temp, but I don't recall what path value I placed in that attribute.

I don't currently use this method, but I THINK it might have been something like ... C:\AwareIM\Tomcat\webapps\AwareIM

kklosson

At runtime, the app errors that it cannot create a folder there. Does anybody know where the app can store a file so that it can be retrieved with a URL call?

kklosson

By creating the folder manually, the function works. Now the only thing between me and victory is that I am calling the URL, which looks like this:

localhost:8080/AwareIM/Temp/WPDINV7051/Jameson_Sands.PDF

When the app calls this URL, I get a blank screen, but if I put that URL into the address bar, it pulls that PDF right up. I used a message to ensure the URL was being passed correctly.

Any reason the Display URL function will not pull a document?

kklosson

Okay, I got it. When using Display URL, the variable containing the prefix must begin with http://... I was just using localhost...

So the cool thing is that I am using a little utility called PDF Combine (www.CoolUtils.com). The target exe takes command line parameters and runs silently.

So I exported all 6 documents to a server folder then call the PDF Combine command line utility to combine all files into a variable name concoction which I really needed.

Each of the six documents automatically gets a bookmark so navigation is simplified. I haven't done it yet, but there is also a command line switch to apply headers/footers and page numbers.

So this is a much better outcome than I would have gained by just embedding several reports.

The PDF Combine utility is $60.

tford

Great solution. Thanks for sharing the details.

customaware

Hey kklosson,

Had a need to combine PDFs and saw your tip regarding PDFCombine utility. Took the next step to the Pro version and it also combines basically any file type, pdf, images, XLS, Doc etc into a single PDF.

Running all from Aware via an EXECUTE PROGRAM call to the command line version of PDFCombinePro.

Awesome! Thanx for the tip.

kklosson

Glad to hear it. Note that I had to abandon the tool (PDFCombineX) because the process had a tendency to hang and run up the CPU. Hopefully you don't experience this - it was otherwise a fine item.