Getting Started with Report Designer

What can Report Designer APIs be used for?

Report designer enables a programmer to build a complete html report without having to learn or know web development, using Simpler Python APIs suitable to create a great looking report. There are variety of cases where the user may want to create a custom report.

A variety of Use cases could be achieved using these APIs:

1. Custom BI Report

2. A custom multipart report to be sent as email periodically

3. ML Model Report generated everytime a Data Scientist fits a model

4. and many more

Base Concept of a Report Designers

Report Designer APIs has 3 fundamental concepts:

1. Project

A Project is a named entity that uniquely identifies this particular report initiative. It also uniquely identifies the overall dimensions of the pages in this particular report. Project specific apis let the user create, edit, delete and export a project design.

For more details on Project APIs, refer to [Project APIs]

2. Page

A Page identifies a single paper/page in a given report. Like Word or Powerpoint, A Page can be created from available set of page templates. Based on the page template, user now has a predefined set of markers, where he can add a widget or an image.

For more details on supported templates, refer to [Supported Page Templates]

For more details on Page APIs, refer to [Page APIs]

3. Widget

A Widget is a unique chart or image that is either already available or is uploaded to xceed by the user. For more details on supported widgets/charts, refer to [Supported Widgets]

For more details on Widget APIs, refer to [Widget APIs]

Integrating Report Designer APIs in your project

• Ensure that you have latest version of xceedapi python sdk installed

• Follow the steps given in 'Getting Started with Xceed Python Client' to instantiate a client connection

• To access report designer client apis, use the following command.

  reportdesigner_api = client.resource('reportdesigner')

• Create a Report Design Project

  sample_project = reportdesigner_api.create_project({
  	name: "name of report",
  	width: 900,
  	height: 1600
  });
  • The width and height are associated to the page width and height throughout the project.
  • In case the height and width are not provided, the API takes default values for the same.

• Add a page to the project

       sample_page = sample_project.create_page({"type":"Name of the template chosen", "title": "Title of the page"})

• Add widget to the page

  contentName = is the id of the container you want to add content to

  contentType = can be a chart, an image or a simple titleAndDescription

• Export the page