Hi folks,
After a silent release of Ruport 1.6.0, I’m happy to announce Ruport
1.6.1 and Murdoch 1.0.
Although 1.6.1 is just a README update, this announcement will serve
as the 1.6.0 release notes as well.
Most of the changes are shifts in the internals, which will mostly be
of interest to our more hardcore users, but there are some goodies for
everyone.
If you want to see some of the new stuff in action, the fastest way
may be to take a look at this article written by Mike Milner and I:
http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/ruby/2008/04/08/ruport-business-reporting…
It is a bit basic but shows off some of the new features and gives a
general intro to Ruport.
== Introducing Ruport’s Murdoch meta-gem
Because of Ruport’s rolling release schedule, it is sometimes
difficult to keep up with which combinations of ruport, ruport-util
and acts_as_reportable
are compatible with each other. To help with this, we’re now
providing a meta-gem that will grab the currently supported set of
these three packages.
If you’re not sure exactly which parts of Ruport you want to use but
want it all to be there just in case, all you need to do is install
this gem:
gem install murdoch
Then, in your reports:
require “ruport/murdoch”
You can be sure that when you do this, you’ll get packages that don’t
conflict with each other.
You can also of course use gem locking, as needed. This will
hopefully provide an easy way for people to grab our stable packages
all in one fell swoop.
If you want more fine grain control, there is no need to use this gem,
you can continue doing things as you have been.
However, if you plan on using Murdoch, here’s how the versioning
scheme will work:
(a+k).b.c : Changes to core ruport have been made, possible API
breakage
a.(b+k).c : Changes to our support libs (AAR / ruport-util) have been
made, possibel API breakage
a.b.(c+k) : A bug fix release, no external API changes present
Of course, these are just to give you a sense of what’s changed at the
glance, always check the relevant release notes. 
== Ruport 1.6 Changes ==
API Changes
-
Ruport::Renderer has been renamed Ruport::Controller. This will
break most code, but is trivial to fix. -
The formatting helper render_data_by_row has been removed. Users
will need to explicitly call row
renderers or create their own helpers for this. -
Table#rename_columns() no longer creates an error when you attempt
to rename a column that
is not present in the table
New Features
-
Much faster CSV, Text, and HTML output
-
Table#pivot() for grouping summaries based on the pivot operation
-
A new ‘finalize’ hook in formatters that will be called after all
other stages have been processed.
We’ve made use of this in our built in formatters so having to
needlessly call render_pdf is a thing of the past.
(See Ruport::Formatter::PDF#finalize for an example)
- Anonymous formatters for lazy bastards:
class BookReport < Ruport::Controller
stage :list
def setup
self.data = Book.report_table(:all)
end
formatter :html do
build :list do
output << textile(“h3. Book List”)
output << data.to_html
end
end
formatter :pdf do
build :list do
pad(10) { add_text “Book List” }
draw_table data
end
end
formatter :csv do
build :list do
output << data.to_csv
end
end
end
== Aknowledgements
During our work on Ruport 1.6, we’ve picked up two developers, Ryan
Platte and Brian C…
They were the ones who did most of the cool stuff here, so please
direct your mad propz to them.
== Shameless Plug
The Ruport Book is now updated to cover Ruport 1.6. You can browse
the HTML version for free at:
If you like what you see and/or want to support the project, consider
purchasing a PDF or print copy:http://www.lulu.com/content/1700117
Users who purchase either are entitled to unlimited PDF updates with
proof of purchase. There is no
need to buy both the PDF and the Print version.
25% of revenue goes to a charity we think is really cool:
Engineers Without Borders, USA (http://ewb-usa.org).