FrankR
Posts: 154
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| Posted: 04/11/2012, 6:45 AM |
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What is my fastest path to creating a printable view of a form? I thought I had read that there was something built into the product to do this, but I might be mistaken.
Is my only recourse to build the form a Second time as a Report?
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Oper
Posts: 1195
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| Posted: 04/11/2012, 6:49 AM |
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In Must Case we use ReportManager (to print as PDF)
but in some case we do that, Create 2nd form as a REPORT so we could clean the PRINT
without useless image/Button/Border/etc
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andrewi
Posts: 162
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| Posted: 04/11/2012, 3:14 PM |
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Or use a css "noprint" style to hide page elements (menus, buttons, etc) when printing.
Put this at the top of the html (or in your header includable page)
</style>
<style type="text/css" media="print">
<!--
.noprint { display: none; }
-->
</style>
Then, to hide an element in the print view, set its class to noprint. I hide a table cell containing menu items like this:
<td class="noprint" ...>
If you build this into your header sub-forms (if you use them) then it can be applied to all pages with almost zero-effort.
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Rick
Posts: 52
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| Posted: 04/12/2012, 6:17 AM |
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At least in CCS 4.3 there are built-in print view capabilities of CCS that provide printing capability that prints without the formatting that is shown in browser view mode. So there should not be the need to write it a second time as a report.
I have not used reports in awhile but decided to put the following notes together on CCS Reporting because I do not see much on the forum or in the help files on it. Hopefully, it will be useful to some.
Outline of Report Creation and Printing in CCS 4.3
(I do not know if this would also apply to the newly released CCS 5. I have not upgraded yet as I have built a content management system around CCS 4.3 that facilitates quickly designing and creating user maintainable websites.)
This is very rough info on CCS reports - created retrospectively many months after I created client invoicing report using information from time and expense data tables that contain data for all clients.
You may need to create PDF reports for precise formatting but that is not covered in this brief write up since the CCS report capability, augmented with using template variables, sufficed for my needs in my invoicing project.
- Start with a new page and click on Toolbox Builder 'Report Builder'.
- This takes you thru the Report Builder dialog boxes similar to the Grid and Record Builder, ie. select the data source using a table or query that results in the grid report component, search criteria, etc.
- Go thru the 9 steps in the report builder to create the report, selecting the table (you can always change it later, say joining another table to the query) setting up a query that results in the grid component, create grouping of data, report layout, etc.
- Step 7 is where you Enable Print mode by checking off 'Create Printable Version Link' which will automatically create a link on the report page to a printable version of the report which is really a link to itself, the same report page, but formatted a little better for printing vs what is displayed on the screen.
- If you want better visual display control (though less then the absolute control you get from PDFs) you can also use template variables for a section of the report. For example, for my client invoicing system I used the template variable route to get summary data to format the summary first page of client invoices exactly as I want it and then report grids that have supporting line item data that in this project was less important as far as preciseness of formatting since it is support data for the invoice.
Below shows the Search part of the report Before Show event 'Hide-Show Component' settings. I do not remember having to set this up, I think it was automatically set up based on it being a report and the report builder criteria setup. Just in case it was not done automatically the settings are as follows:
Search Record - 'Before Show' event - 'Hide-Show Component' event name:
Action: Hide
Condition Type: Parameter
Compare As: Text
Condition: Equal
Parameter 1:
Name: ViewMode
Source Type: URL
Parameter 2:
Name: "Print" (note put in the quotes exactly as shown)
Source Type: Expression
My page break requirements were not demanding. I used techniques discussed at:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/article.php/34703...nd-Printing.htm, for example:
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
P.breakhere {page-break-before: always}
</STYLE>
and then the following where you need the page break:
<P CLASS="breakhere">
Hope this brief write-up helps. The report capability of CCS was sufficient to create an invoicing system that is used for 9 client bills that have to be created every month. The invoices that are created are based on time and expense data created from a time and expense system created by CCS and used by staff members to input the data. Because of the complexity and volume of the data that is needed to create the invoices the invoicing system allows a non technical and non bookkeeper to create automated invoices in a fraction of the time it took for a bookkeeper to create equivalent invoices and does so without the errors that resulted from manually putting together the invoices.
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FrankR
Posts: 154
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| Posted: 04/12/2012, 6:43 AM |
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Rick - thanks so much for taking the time for that great post.
Very helpful.
I have tried using Report Builder, but it wasn't quite working for me. It may just be
that I'm not using it right yet. I have a ticket in for it.
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