zipreport
Very lightweight module for creating PDF reports with Python
Motivation
This library is meant to be a drop-in replacement for report generation I was doing with Filemaker Pro and
operates under about the same principles as print layout on Filemaker Pro. You, the client, have a list of
ordered records, which can be any subscriptable thing but in my example are dicts
, and these are fed into
a Document
object you create and customize which establishes how fields in each record are formatted and
laid out on the page, the formatting of page headers and footers, and summary headers and footers.
After experimenting with other report libraries available I found each was lacking a few important features I needed, often relating to fine control over pagination, page numbering, page layout and section headings, so this is what I came up with.
Example
In the example you can see how a basic report is customized. All formatting is
contained in a Document
object, draws Part
objects in various parts of the document based on certain
conditions. The page_header
and page_footer
parts are drawn at the top and bottom of each page.
Each record to be printed is displayed in a content_part
:
content_part = Part(
elements=[Element(x=0.,
y=0.,
width=72.,
height=18.,
content=FormattedText("N:$name", font_family='Futura', font_size=9.)),
Element(x=96.,
y=0,
width=72.*4.,
height=4.*72.,
can_shrink=True,
content=FormattedText("$comment", font_family='Futura', font_size=9.)),
Element(x=72. * 6, y=0., width=36, height=18,
content=FormattedText("$rn", font_family='Futura', font_size=9.,
alignment='r'))],
minimum_height=72.
)
A Part
contains a list of Element
objects which define a rectangle (positioned relative to the origin,
the upper-left corner of the parent Part
), and each element has a corresponding Content
. Content
objects contain specific style and content. The FormattedText
content has a format string which can
substitute values from a content object. For example above, the first element reades the 'name' key from
the content object and substitutes it into the format string.
Under Contruction
This project is still under contruction but functions on a basic level.