Export data to XML - generate xml files?

[ACDC]

Sorry, I have just remembered you cannot do a Text Document with a subreport. Maybe a standard report could work. I will have to check

[CalD]

A standard report is not purely text?

[customaware]

Standard Report is PDF Cal

[CalD]

Right you are, so back to the original question about exporting an invoice as xml, there is no point using a standard report - unless you are prepared to use a plugin of some sort to convert the pdf to xml.

I still don't see a better way than just building the text string into a large attribute or attributes as per my earlier suggestion, one enhancement on what I said earlier is you could possibly use REPLACE_PATTERN to tidy it up and make it easier to read.

[intra]

I think a plugin would be the way to generate this.

I'm going to attempt to write you one, i hope you're not in a rush for it as i'm doing it for my own curiosity. (in between writing a preso for the conference)

I'll PM you over the weekend George.

[ACDC]

Right you are, so back to the original question about exporting an invoice as xml, there is no point using a standard report - unless you are prepared to use a plugin of some sort to convert the pdf to xml.

If you design a report and make sure it contains only text, and then EXPORT the report to Invoice1234.xml you should end up with a file containing the text

A report only becomes a pdf document when you PRINT or Export a *.pdf , but in this case you are exporting the document with a *.xml

I could be totally wrong of course, the exported file may contain other characters which totally debunks my theory. If I had time I would test it out, maybe you should give it a try (My experience using the report writer for this purpose has been for a simple text layout, no grid items and using Text document type)

[intra]

Got an email address i can send you a file attachment George?

[weblike]

Got an email address i can send you a file attachment George?

I've sent you a PM.

Thank you

[CalD]

Curious as to if you got this sorted, and how you ended up doing it?

[aware_support]

If you want custom XML export (as is the case here), then it's really easy to do it with a plugin - we have created dozens of such plugins.

You can try doing it with reports as some suggest or using some other technique, but if your XML is reasonably complex you will end up with lots of sub-reports and performance will not be great. Still it can be a workable solution.

But plugins are by far the best method for this.

[Jaymer]

could someone post one of these JAVA projects (or even just the "wrapper") so others of us could learn and get started with plugins?
thx

[aware_support]

There is a video tutorial on Java plugins - please watch it

[CalD]

This frustrates me to to be honest, I don't particularly want to learn how to write java plugins. Just like when I use other tools I don't want to learn .net to extend functionality. However I do appreciate in some cases for obscure reasons there may be no choice.

[aware_support]

If you can work around it with document templates and other techniques, feel free to do so. But like you say, in some cases, there is simply no other choice.