Previous: Web Programming

androPage

Most of the programming that we do for web sites follows a simple pattern. The user request comes to the web server, we pull some data from a database, and we display it to the user. This pattern holds true even for operations that do not at first glance seem very similar. A simple export to a CSV file is the same as producing a polished PDF report, you pull it out and give it to the user. The only difference is the display format. Even a page of complex HTML is just another way to display data that was taken from the database.

The Andromeda "andropage" feature builds on this idea. If you can spell out the data you want, including some crucial details like filters and ordering, it should be pretty simple to just tell the framework to use some standard output method, like a Smarty template, PDF, CSV, or even a plain vanilla framework-generated dump of the data.

Getting Started

First, choose a name for your page. It should not be the same as a table, but otherwise use any convention you want. In this example we will use "ex_customers" because we are going to do an example page out of the CUSTOMERS table of the Demonstration Database.

Once you have a name, fire up your favorite editor and we will work up "--name--.page.yaml", which should be saved in your applications directory. Here is the complete example of ex_customers.page.yaml:

options:
    title: Customer Report
    
table customers:
    column customer:
    column description:
    column amt_order:
        compare: between @amt1 and @amt2
    column amt_paid:
    column amt_balance:
    
uifilter amt1:
    type_id: numb
    colprec: 10
    colscale: 2
    description: Minimum Balance
uifilter amt2:
    type_id: numb
    colprec: 10
    colscale: 2
    description: Maximum Balance

Linking To This Page

Before we go into too many details, we will see how to link to this page.

You can put this page on your menu in the database YAML file. Here is an example of two placements from the demo database:

# ======================================================================
# REPORTS
# ======================================================================
module appreps:
    uisort: 400
    description: Reports
    
menu ex_customers:
    module: appreps
    uisort: 100   
    description: Customers

menu ex_salestax:
    module: appreps
    uisort: 200
    description: Tax Report

You can link to this page by specifying the "gp_page" parameter in any hyperlink:

<a href="http://www.andromeda-project.org/demo/?gp_page=ex_customers"
  >A hard-coded link to my example!</a>

You can also supply filter values in the hyperlink. Filter values are explained in more detail below, but for now it is enough to know that if you want to pre-supply them with a link you name the parameters "txt_" + filter name, as in this example:

<?php
$url="http://www.andromeda-project.org/demo/";
$parms='?gp_page=ex_customers'
    .'&txt_amt1=10000'
    .'&txt_amt2=30000';
?>
<a href="<?=$url.$parms?>"
  >A hard-coded link to my example!</a>

What the User Sees

When you link to an androPage, the first thing the user sees is a page requesting his filter values:

When the user clicks on the print button, the default action is to print a PDF report. Notice that the report makes use of the title and displays the filter values:

Controlling The Flow

Sometimes you do not wish the user to see the first screen asking for filter values. To prevent this, pass in at least one filter value as a parameter.

Output Modes

So far androPage supports two output modes:

pdf
smarty

We are planning the following output modes:

A plain vanilla HTML display, with various tricks such as having foreign key values appear as hyperlinks.
A plain-text report format suitable for high speed line printers.
Non-smarty HTML/PHP pages that can contain any code.

AndroPage Smarty