How to render HTML-tables to pdf

WFG · 2008-05-06T03:25:24+00:00

Hi there. I'm trying to render a text-field (content-type HTML) with a table ("<table><tr><td>column1</td>...") to a pdf-output. No matter what I try, nothing seems to work. It seems, that a <td>-tag gives rise to start new columns in the resulting pdf, but they can't be formatted! Everything works fine…

WFG

Hi there.
I'm trying to render a text-field (content-type HTML) with a table ("<table><tr><td>column1</td>...") to a pdf-output.
No matter what I try, nothing seems to work.
It seems, that a <td>-tag gives rise to start new columns in the resulting pdf, but they can't be formatted!
Everything works fine (table-border, column-alignment) as long, as I render to HTML...
I found lots of bugzilla-entries about this issue, all marked checked in (from 2005 up to may, 2007).
Any idea?
many thanks.

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JasonW

Can you post an example table you want to render? Also what version of BIRT are you using?

Jason

WFG

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="JasonW">Can you post an example table you want to render? Also what version of BIRT are you using? 
 
Jason</blockquote>
 
Jason. 
Many thanks first. The sample-table is quite simple. It's anything like: 
 
<table width="100%"> -- the width-attribute will be ignored! 
<tr> 
<td> 
Column1 
</td> 
</tr> 
<tr> 
<td align="right"> -- the allign-attribute wil also be ignored 
1234.56 
</td> 
</tr> 
</table> 
 
I place this in a Text-Field (content-type: HTML [of course]) and render it with BIRT 2.1.1. Engine to pdf without effect (or to an HTML-output and everything's fine). 
Also, if I open such a design with 2.2.2. deseigner, the preview in HTML is fine while the pdf-preview doesn't take any effect. Even if I leave the <table>- and the <tr>-tags, the pdf-render-engine will take the <td> - tags and build some columns - but still not interested in the attributes... 
 
Does this help (to help me

) )? 
Many thanks again 
Wil

jimp

I am sorry to post this unrelated issue because I can not find any link to allow me to post a new topic. Please help me.

JasonW

Jimp,

Select the Forum Tools Dropdown.

Jason

JasonW

Wil,

I understand now. The table displays but the formatting is not applied. Can you log a bugzilla entry for this?

Jason

WFG

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="JasonW">Wil, 
 
I understand now. The table displays but the formatting is not applied. Can you log a bugzilla entry for this? 
 
Jason</blockquote>
 
Thanks Jason. 
That's what I'll do. 
Beside this, I'm trying to run the whole Birt-Project to see, if there is an easy way to adjust columns in the pdf emitter (found a good candidate in PDFPage.java) but I can't run the pdf emitter. 
I did it the easy way: I checked out the sources via CVS. Then, when the the whole project was built (had to resolve a few errors) I added another simple project to the workspace that runs the platform/engine. I can startup everthing, I can compile the .rptdocument file but the pdf-emitter won't run. Got a log like this (sorry for the german messages): 
 
09.05.2008 09:59:49 org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.EngineTask createContentEmitter 
SCHWERWIEGEND: Report engine can not create pdf emitter. 
09.05.2008 09:59:49 org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.RenderTask render 
SCHWERWIEGEND: An error happened while running the report. Cause: 
org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.EngineException: Report engine fails to initialize pdf emitter, please make sure required libraries for this emitter are installed. 
at org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.EngineTask.createContentEmitter(EngineTask.java:1034) 
at org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.RenderTask$PageRangeRender.render(RenderTask.java:466) 
at org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.impl.RenderTask.render(RenderTask.java:254) 
at PrintJob.PrintPDF(PrintJob.java:370) 
at PrintJob.run(PrintJob.java:98) 
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) 
09:59:49 org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.EngineException: Report engine fails to initialize pdf emitter, please make sure required libraries for this emitter are installed. 
 
While debugging the session, I ran through the PDFEmitter's Constructor. But actually, I really don't know, what happens there. 
 
Can you give some newby-advice? The idea is to fix the table/alignment.problem locally until it's fixed in the next BIRT-Release. 
 
Many thanks again 
Wil

JasonW

Wil,

Did the org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.pdf project build without any errors?

The class you should probably look at is the HTML2Content class. I did some more testing and got yours table to work with using inline styles. These seem to get picked up by the style processor. Try this.

<table style="width: 100%">
<tr>
<td>
Column1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: right">
1234.56
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Jason

WFG

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="JasonW">Wil, 
 
Did the org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.pdf project build without any errors? 
 
The class you should probably look at is the HTML2Content class. I did some more testing and got yours table to work with using inline styles. These seem to get picked up by the style processor. Try this. 
 
<table style="width: 100%"> 
<tr> 
<td> 
Column1 
</td> 
</tr> 
<tr> 
<td style="text-align: right"> 
1234.56 
</td> 
</tr> 
</table> 
 
Jason</blockquote>
 
THAT'S IT!!! 
Using css (or inline style) is exactly what I forgot! 
So, it's not needed to compile (and "fix") BIRT. I simply have to change the "table-generation-process" (it's programmed). 
many many thanks again.