Report Tool Tips and Tricks

This document is a guide to help you become more productive with the Report Tool by showing you how to address some of the more common tasks that need to be done when designing a Report.

• Using the select attribute
  The select attribute enables you to filter down the set of properties for the Items returned from a query.
  
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  <Item type="Part" action="get" select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"/>

• Using the order_by attribute
  The order_by attribute enables you to order the results of the query. The style sheet also supports sorting on the properties.
  
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  <Item type="Part"
  action="get"
  select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
  order_by="part_number"
  />

• Using the condition attribute
  The condition attribute enables you to specify a condition for the properties used as search criteria. All the conditions that are allowed in SQL are allowed as the values to the condition attribute.
  
  Note

  The greater then and less then symbols are replaced with the two-letter pneumonic word. The ＜ symbol is lt, and the > symbol is gt, ＞=is ge and so on.
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  <Item type="Part"
  action="get"
  select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
  order_by="part_number">
  <part_number condition="like">%123%</part_number>
  </Item>

• OR’ing property values
  The ＜or＞tag provides a way to logically OR property values for the search criteria.
  
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  <Item type="Part"
  action="get"
  select="part_number,part_description,part_cost"
  order_by="part_number">
  <or>
  <state>Released</state>
  <state>In Review</state>
  </or>
  </Item>

• Return Relationships in the results
  You can include the ＜Relationships＞ tag and the relationship items you want to return.
  
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  <Item type="{@type}" id="{@id}" action="get" select="part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
  <Relationships>
  <Item type="Part EBOM" action="get" select="position,qty,related_id">
  <related_id>
  <Item type="Part" action="get" select="id,part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
  <Relationships>
  <Item type="Part AVL" action="get" select="avl_status,related_id(description,manufacturer,component_no)"/>
  </Relationships>
  </Item>
  </related_id> 
  </Item>
  </Relationships>
  </Item>

• Using Relationships as search criteria
  You can include the ＜Relationships＞ tag to describe the search criteria for the relationship items.
  
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  <Item type="{@type}" id="{@id}" action="get" select="part_no,part_desc,part_cost">
  <Relationships>
  <Item type="Part EBOM" action="get" select="position,qty,related_id">
  <qry condition="gt">1000</qty> 
  </Item>
  </Relationships>
  </Item>

• Displaying a non-breaking white space
  To display a non-breaking white space, use the ＜xsl:text＞ tag.
  
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  <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp;</xsl:text>
  Or this: &#160;

• Displaying the formatted text property
  To display formatted text (the marked-up text) property value in XSLT, use the disable-output-escaping attribute with the ＜xsl:value-of＞ tag. The marked-up text for the formatted text property is a complete HTML document and only the content for the BODY tag is required.
  
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  <xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select=".//BODY/*"/>

• Displaying nested tables for relationships
  To display the relationship Items for nested tables, reduce the XPath to the relative path based on the context node for the ＜xsl:for-each＞ loop that the nested relationships table is in.
  
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  <xsl:for-each select="Relationships/Item">
  <xsl:for-each select="related_id/Item/Relationships/Item">
  </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:for-each>

• Resizing the Report window
  To resize the report window, add an onload callback function for the HTML page. Add the following code before the ＜body＞ tag:
  
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  <script>
  onload = function()
  {
  top.window.resizeTo(800,600);
  }
  </script>

• Showing a different value based on the value for a property
  To show a different value in the Report based on the actual value of the property. For example, the actual value of the property is the hex number for a color, but you want to show the name of the color in text.
  
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  To show a different value in the Report based on the actual value of the property. For example, the actual value of the property is the hex number for a color, but you want to show the name of the color in text.
  <xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#FF0000'">Red</xsl:when>
  <xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#FFFF00'">Yellow</xsl:when>
  <xsl:when test="mgr_opinion='#00FF00'">Green</xsl:when>
  </xsl:choose>

• Supporting European languages
  To show the results in a European language:

1. Set the encoding attribute for the root xml tag:
   
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   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

2. Set the encoding attribute for the output tag:
   
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   <xsl:output encoding="iso-8859-1" method="html"
   omit-xml-declaration="yes" standalone="yes" indent="yes" />