John,
I had a situation that wasn't exactly your use case but may be helpful. We were manually exporting data to Excel in order to have more control to get a better formatted printout onto paper. I wanted the users to be able to print out data with more controlled formatting much more directly from the QB app. So I used an XSLT code page and the ability to set up a report to Format to "XML (Flat)" which then allows you to define the XSLT file to use to render the report. The user then used the browser's print dialog to send to the printer.
The steps are (steps 1 and 2 are a bit chicken and egg):
- Create a report that returns the data you want to use
- Set up your XSLT as a code page. (I used an internal style sheet rather than a CSS file) This can access the data in the report by iterating over the XML data.
- Go back to the report settings and set it up so the Options --> Format is "XML (flat)" and reference your XSLT code page.
When the report is run in QB, it then renders as XML and applies the XSLT to transform the XML file to the browser.
Some things to be aware of:
- The report rendered in the current browser tab. The only way for the user to get back to QB was to use the browser back button. There might be ways to address this but it was fine in my case and since I didn't have a lot of experience with XSLT I didn't pursue it.
- Once the report is set up to render via XSLT there isn't the normal access to "Customize this Report". You need to go to the Table settings and edit the report from there to change anything.
- There is an "XML (structured)" format but it had more info than I needed for what I was doing. If you set the report format but don't put anything in the "Associated XSL document" field and then run the report, it will spit the resulting XML to the browser. This will allow you to see the XML structure and node names that QB uses, etc.
Here is an example of one of my XSLT code pages (saved as an App Page with .xsl extension)It renders a list of classes for a "camp" with instructor names and class locations in a table.
Note: I am new to using XSLT so there may be better ways of coding this than I did.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
h1 {
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 36pt;
color: #CF5300;
text-align: center;
}
h2 {
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 24pt;
color: #1368AA;
text-align: center;
}
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid black;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
table {
table-layout: auto;
align: center;
padding: 1px;
}
th, td {
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;
padding-left: 3px;
padding-right: 3px;
}
th {
text-align: center;
font-size: 18pt;
font-weight: bold;
color: #904034;
padding-top: 2px;
padding-bottom: 2px;
}
td.classname {
font-size: 12pt;
color: #1368AA;
text-align: left;
font-weight: bold;
padding-top: 4px;
padding-bottom: 4px;
}
td.general{
font-size: 12pt;
text-align: left;
padding-top: 4px;
padding-bottom: 4px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<xsl:variable name="campName" select="/document/record[1]/camp___name" />
<table width="100%">
<thead>
<tr><td colspan="3">
<h1><xsl:text>Classroom Locations</xsl:text></h1>
<h2><xsl:copy-of select="$campName" /></h2>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<th width="40%">Class</th>
<th width="27%">Instructor(s)</th>
<th width="33%">Location</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<xsl:for-each select="/document/record">
<tr>
<td class="classname"><xsl:value-of select="name" /></td>
<td class="general"><xsl:value-of select="instructors" /></td>
<td class="general"><xsl:value-of select="class_location___name" /></td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
------------------------------
Audrey Oppenlander
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