[ic] Excel/PDF files on-the-fly

[interchange-users@icdevgroup.org (Michael Stearne)]

mike@perusion.com wrote:

>(Lazy quoting fixed, please don't do that)
>
>Quoting Michael Stearne (mstearne@entermix.com):
>  
>
>>Rene Hertell wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Has anyone created an excel or PDF file that is always downloadable with the
>>>source pulled out from the db in real-time? I tried to check the excel
>>>export-function from the UI, but that contains too many steps (and I don't
>>>want to write a file to the server when someone downloads these files).
>>>
>>>What I would need is a result from a sql query that should be in Excel
>>>format. A formatted version as a PDF-file would then be my next step after I
>>>have solved the excel problem...
>>>
>>>I'm able to create files that have text-content like vcards, csv-files etc,
>>>but everything else is seems to be to complicated for the moment...
>>>
>>>I would appreciate it very much if someone could give me some hints in how
>>>to solve these two problems.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>What do you mean by Excel format?  Excel is a closed binary format, 
>>there is no way to make a file that is truly in Excel's native format. 
>>    
>>
>
>Au contraire.
>
>  
>
>>What you might do is just create a CSV file and name it .csv.  Excel or 
>>any other spreadsheet that owns the .csv extension in Windows, OS X or 
>>Gnome/KDE will open the file and automatically translate it into it's 
>>native format.  As for PDF, you might export the data into an HTML table 
>>and then use HTMLDOC (http://easysw.com/htmldoc/) to convert that HTML 
>>file on-the-fly to a PDF.
>>    
>>
>
>Actually, you can do it quite easily by building a UserTag based
>on the [backup-database ...] tag. That uses Spreadsheet::WriteExcel.
>  
>
Sorry, I didn't know that IC made it so easy.  I knew you could do it in 
Perl, though.  I admit my answer was leading the user away from Excel to 
a more generic format.  I guess there were political reasons....

Michael