I am working on a project where there may be several configurations (site for customer A , site for customer B,...). Each configuration has potentially different interactions (it is rare).
So I wrote my code with scenarios for certain configurations.
#config1 #config2 #config3
Scenario: A
Given hello
#config1
Scenario: B
Given hello
Scenario: C
Given hello
The problem is that I can’t find a solution to say when I’m on config "config3" that I want scenario A and C.
I’ve tested a lot of combinations with ~#config3 or not #config3. But I can’t do what I want to do.
Is that even possible?
A big thanks for your help.
One thing is that you are trying to combine a scenario with tag and without a tag which might not even possible as per my knowledge.
One solution to this is that you can have a tag on scenario c and combine that with other tags.
Let us assume you have #tagc on scenario c. Then you can use that with other tags to make it work.
if you want to run scenario 1 and 3: (#config3 or #tagc) Scenario 1 and 2: (#config1)
Reference: https://cucumber.io/docs/cucumber/api/#tags
Suppose I have a huge set of noisy phrases. For each one of them, I want to check if it is defined by some resources by using the google define feature. Once I type "define my_phrase" to the google search box, if the retrieved results contain the definition panel (e.g. https://www.google.com/#q=define+home+cooking), I put it into my phrase pool.
I'm wondering is this possible to do this task in a batch so that I don't have to type each of the phrase manually one by one? It would be great if this could be achieved from a unix terminal but windows is also welcome!
I heard of google-app-engine but I only have a rough idea and not sure if it could help.
Thanks!
as starting point, you may try and play with the Google Custom search following API reference - Xml results
https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/xml_results?hl=en&csw=1#XML_Results
Be aware of:
google TOS for this service
quantity courtesy limit
What is the best way to compare two CRM (2011) Solutions and find the differences?. We have two solutions one is QA-Solution other is Production-Solution, I want to find out the differences between them. Actually i need to apply all the changes on Production-Solution and then we will deploy that solution somewhere else by using CRM's Solution Import Export functionality.
The solution file contains the web resources, and an XML file that defines the solution. You should be able to unzip the two solution files, and use a file diff utility to compare the two folder structures. The results aren't going to be very pretty, but it shouldn't be too difficult to at least identify what web resources have changed, and what entities have been updated.
Edit
Be aware that any data changes (ie, creating new Contacts) you've made will not be found in the solution export. This also includes some other things like Duplication Rules, if you've made any....
Customization Comparer is a Code Plex tool for comparing the customization XML that you may find helpful. For other files, Daryl's answer is a good option.
I noticed that sitecore has the option of exporting users in an Excel format.
I need to have similar functionality for exporting 'participations', (a users can enlist to take part in an 'event', and if their entry is approved via a sitecore workflow, a 'participation' item is created in the content tree)
Since mostly everything in Sitecore is in essence based on items, and I want to export items to Excel, my question is - what are some of the best ways of doing this?
Questions:
Is there a way to re-use this functionality for regular items?
Would it be a good idea to create a custom admin page (any tips on doing this?) which has some custom code that reads the items from the database using the API?
are there sitecore plugins/shared source projects that can help me achieve this?
Or does anyone have a better idea? - would it be better to just store the participations in SQL? I'm mostly doing it this way because I want to make use of the 'free' functionality offers, for example workflow, but if that leads to me using anti-patterns please shoot me ;)
Link is different now: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Advanced_System_Reporter.aspx
P.S. Couldn't leave a comment to original answer as I don't have enough reputation. Oh well :)
Found a most excellent shared source module which does exactly this (and much more)!
Basically it allows you to configure (and easily extend, if you need to) any kind of table based report on 'items'.
The report module shows up as an application in the sitecore menu (like the user manager tool) and comes with features such as xml,csv, xls export. It's also really easy to set up, once you get the hang of it.
http://trac.sitecore.net/AdvancedSystemReporter
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Our company is looking to integrate invoices into a new system we are developing.
We require a solution to create a layout of the invoice and then convert to pdf.
We have considered just laying out the invoice in html/css then converting to pdf.
We have also considered using SVG->PDf conversion.
Both of these solutions integrate well into our existing templating language used for our web application.
Historically we have been a Microsoft based business and used Crystal Reports for such a task but we are looking for an open source Linux solution for this project.
Does any one have any suggestions of an approach or technology we could use for such a task?
Try this... create a blank invoice with Word (or whatever you want) and save it as a PDF.
Then use a PDF library to modify the PDF (insert the text at particular coordinates). We do this in the Microsoft world and it is extremely easy.
The biggest benefit is that we can use our own tools to create and modify the template. If we want to add some static text, we just crank open Word, make the change and save it to a PDF file (that is being used as a template).
For Microsoft, we use iTextSharp which is actually a C# port of the original Java version of iText
Additionally...
You can use Adobe Acrobat to insert fields in the PDF (address, phone, invoice number, line item 1, line item 2, etc...) and then use iText/iTextSharp to populate these fields at run time.
This is, in more detail, what we do... and it is extremely easy.
The normal way is to install (La)TeX (probably already on the linux box) and run pdflatex to get the pdfs. You can also use Apache FOP, if you prefer xslt and xsl-fo.
If the number of invoices to create is low you might want to use open-office (directly or as a toolkit).
If you want high-precision positioning and low-level access, a low-level pdf library (I don't know if iTextSharp works with mono) might be what you want.
I would try out LaTeX first, because it allows you to get results with the least effort.
I've previously produced invoices by templating a PostScript file, and then using Ghostscript's ps2pdf to convert those into PDFs.
We use Reportlab with Python. If you look around there are a load of ready-made forms/invoices/etc.
There are several OSS reporting engines (Jasper Reports, Pentaho and BIRT to name three) that you could use in much the same way as you have historically used Crystal Reports. One of the other posters mentions ReportLab, which is an option if you're using Python or can embed a Python runtime in your application.
Probably the most flexible solution is to create XMLs with invoice data and then by using XSLTs transform the, into PDFs, HTMls, whatever...
It depends on your environment. If you have access to Java, you might look at iText (http://www.lowagie.com/iText/), a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
There are two steps, if i understood correctly:
1) Creation of PDF template with placeholders to populate data programmatically
2) Populating the PDF template programmatically during run time
For #1, OpenOffice allows creation of PDF templates, which can then be populated programmatically. It's good enough to create simple invoices that doesn't probably involve datagrid/table kind of stuff.
For #2, you already have the answers here - iText, iTextSharp.
Hope this helps!
I love wkhtmltopdf http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
Not sure what your goal is here, but there is an opensource php-library called fpdf, which also has an extension for taking a pre-made pdf as layout and then populate it with more content, generating a new PDF with that info.
However, I would go for a solution that you can integrate nicely into the plattform you're building, but I wouldn't go in a HTML->PDF solution since you won't have any clue about what would fit on a piece of paper regarding sizes in that kind of enviroment, meaning you won't know when you should split the content into two separate templates.
You might also try using XSL:FO. XSL:FO is a documented standard for describing page layout: http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/#fo-section.
I've had success on two projects creating documents by creating an XML schema that defines the content of the "PDF". I then use the XSD tool (from Microsoft) to generate a class representing this document. I then map my data into that structure, serialize the populated class to XML, along with an XSL stylesheet that defines how that data should be mapped into FO, and pass it to an FO formatter. For formatters, I have use Alt-Soft's Xml2Pdf with success. There are a few others out there. There are some tools available to help create the XSL to FO stylesheet (i.e. stylusstudio and XmlSpy), but I recommend learning the FO constructs as the tools seem to produce bloated stylesheets. FO is comparable to HTML (where a P tag is a BLOCK tag in FO), but can be tricky. This nice thing about FO, is that some formatter support conversion to other formats, such as Word, HTML, etc.
Other options:
iTextSharp (C# port of iText). Just started reading about this. Open source and free. I don't think there is any "templating" supported with this, but I could be wrong about that.
SQL Server Reporting Services. Assuming your invoice data is in, or can be put in, a format that can be read by reporting services (SQL Server, Web Service, etc), define the layout in SSRS and then publish to reporting server. Use SSRS Web Services or query parameter execution to execute the report and have it output as PDF.
This html-2-pdf site may be a helpful starting point: http://maarten.lippmann.us/?p=101
A site a friend of mine built uses a script to churn HTML pages into printable PDFs, too - http://philambdaupsilon.org. Not sure on the exact details of it, but he is an SO user, and I'll send this question to him, too.
Unfortunately, the best system on the market (at present) is passing the HTML & CSS to a ColdFusion server and have that return the rendered PDF. So if money isn't a big concern, this is the quickest to deploy solution that'll render the best results.
I've tried very hard to get FPDF, TCPDF, the R&OS pdf class, and even CodeIgniter's recommendation to work, but nothing with stable output for anything beyond the most basic/bland HTML files.
Honestly, if the ColdFusion solution isn't viable, I'd use html2ps, and then ps2pdf to convert your files into a PDF.
(This is all assuming that you don't want to take the time and design each PDF using the native PDF-creator code in PHP. This is what systems like SugarCRM use. Though its very functional with stable results, the actual creation of each PDF-generator file is a most painful process)
We have used Jasper Reports before. It's not what you'd call user-friendly, but it will talk directly to your database.
html2pdf works very well. You can use this to generate both HTML and PDF reports from the same source.
I'm fiddling with Black Sheep Invoices right now, which is great at first but now I'm having trouble actually getting it to render the PDFs. Lots of installation difficulties--probably a lot easier on your own server but i'm up on a shared host with it. The HTML output and data management portions are well done though, which is something you won't get out of just creating a postscript template. I was hoping to find a reference to a library that has an active development team though (Black Sheep is not being updated at this time).
If you want browser perfect HTML converted to PDF then try commandlineprint
You'll need to install firefox on a linux distro, disable all firefox alerts and then run it through a virtual display. Check this thread for more details.
It's infuriating to get running well but does give you the best results for HTML to PDF conversion I've seen.
OK, a search of Google Code projects turned up Simple Invoices, which is awesome and well maintained.
I use TROFF for my invoices because of its extremely simple textual encoding. The logic is a few lines of Perl. Keeping it simple.
For a Ruby solution, try Prawn: http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/
I use open office on the server and then generate the XML for the document (just unzip the document and hack away)
Some can use Dhek template editor to define area/placeholder for existing PDF, without altering existing document, and then populate it to generate final doc (e.g. with user values from a form): https://github.com/applicius/dhek .