Tuto WEBDEV 25

198 Part 5: Let’s continue the development Generating documents in HTML, PDF or XML format Printing from HTML, PDF or XML documents consists in creating a document and in displaying it on the browser of Web user. To create this document, all you have to do is use the WEBDEV report editor. A formatted file can be "generated" by your WEBDEV site from a data source. The file can be in HTML, PDF, RTF or XML format. The main benefit of this method is that the generated file can be transmitted to the browser. The Web user can print the document or store it on his computer. Printing in a file can be used for an Internet site and for an Intranet/Extranet site (for example: to transmit an order form in PDF format to the Web user, ...). What is a report made of? In our example, the invoice that must be printed will correspond to a report. A report is a project element used to group and format the data to print. To create and use reports, WEBDEV proposes a specific editor: the report editor. A report includes: • different blocks. The blocks are used to define the areas where the data will be displayed. The available blocks are as follows: • Start of document: block displayed on the first page only. • Page header: block displayed at the top of each page. • Body: block containing the data. This block is printed as long as there is data to print. • Page footer: block displayed at the bottom of each page. • End of document: block displayed on the last page only. • controls used to display the data. Let’s see the report that we want to create: