Recommendations for easy reports

I’m working on an application that looks at a folder full of media, gathers metadata and needs to present the user with a human-readable report. The data in the report includes thumbnail images and text, and I want the formatting to conform to some kind of template (that is, thumbnails and text always in the same position in each report entry.

So far everything I’ve built with RealBasic/Xojo has involved manipulation of files, but not so much this kind of thing. I saw there’s a Reports class, but the documentation seems a bit thin and I can’t really find examples of the kind of thing it outputs. It also seems to be primarily about database reporting, and I’m just working from a simple data structure in memory (though I may write what I’m doing to an XML or JSON file instead. Haven’t decided yet).

In any case, before I start writing my own setup, I’m wondering if anyone can recommend something I can just drop-in. Ultimately, I want stuff formatted for an 8.5x11 page, to print to PDF. I may just use the operating system’s print to PDF function from the print dialog, or I may want to do it directly from the app (again, haven’t decided).

I’m not opposed to buying plugins if they’re reasonably priced and save me some time!

Thanks

Hello Perry,

Xojo offers the possibility to create reports without database connection. All you have to do is create your own DataSet (Reports.DataSet) from your data structure and then you can generate reports just as easily. Admittedly, Xojo documentation for reports is poor.

Have a look at the webinar “Reporting & Printing”.

There are a few report add-ons, but with the Xojo internal solution you can achieve a lot with a little training.

Thanks. About 20 minutes in someone asks if you can nest reports and the answer is no. Is that still the case?

It’d be nice to be able to make a template for the overall page, then a report template for each entry, then drop in multiple entries into the master template.