The Django application I’m developing has a reporting need: paper (PDF) output of reports, both 8 1/2 X 11 and special forms (labels, name tags, etc.). So, I’ve begun evaluating my reporting options.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found very many methods to examine, probably because of my requirements:

Python based

Since I’m using Python/Django for the rest of the work, it would make sense to use Python for this component as well. Other folks that may someday support the application will appreciate having a single skill set to maintain.

Contained in the Application

I’ve found at least one system that runs as a separate service on a server, but that is more complexity than I would like to introduce into a client’s technology stack. This application will appeal to small offices that likely don’t have strong tech support. Adding a separate service (in this example, Java/Tomcat) on top of Django, MySQL and Apache is more than many can do, and I certainly don’t want to get into the server admin business on their behalf.

Open Source

Another issue that the clients won’t want to deal with is licensing to third parties. I’m using all open source tools to build and run the application, and it wouldn’t make sense to require a potential customer to license something before they could use it. Plus, would I have to become a reseller for the licensed software?

Integrated with Django

This is total ‘wish list’ stuff, but wouldn’t it be neat to have an interface similar to the Django templating system where I could bring in data from a view into a report ‘template’?

Looking through Google searches, I’ve found that the terms “reports” and “reporting” can mean different things to different people. Since I’m looking to generate paper, I have been looking at Geraldo, which uses the ReportLab library to generate PDF output. This application looks promising, but is still a work in progress. I’m finding that flexible formatting with variable length text is a difficult, and maybe impossible, thing to do.

I’d like to hear from others on this subject. Have you found a good package for reporting? Are you developing one? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

(This is a ‘Note to Self’ post)

I’ve been trying for half the day to get radio buttons in a custom template to work. The buttons are generated in a for loop that builds a table row for each choice (iterating over a queryset called cls), including this code for the row’s radio button:

input type="radio" name="reg_choice_1" value="{{ cls.id }}"
 {% ifequal srform.reg_choice_1 cls.id %}CHECKED{% endifequal %}

The goal is to have the ifequal test tell me if the row’s cls.id matches the value set in the form. However, I didn’t know how to access that value. After many Google searches, perusal of the Django documentation, and even a failed attempt to follow the template rendering code, I was stumped. As a wild guess, I tried the .data attribute, and it worked! Here’s the updated (and functional) code:

input type="radio" name="reg_choice_1" value="{{ cls.id }}"
{% ifequal srform.reg_choice_1.data cls.id %}CHECKED{% endifequal %}

I hope that I’ve put enough keywords in this post so that future stumped Djangonauts can find some help.

As always, leave your comments below.