Saving an image of a Grid instead of a chart

[Former Member]

I want to generate image files (.png) of an iGrid in a ColumnLights mode inside of a BLS transaction. I can do a chart without difficulty, but can't seem to find a method for doing the same with an iGrid (of any type).

Is there a way of scraping an image out of an .irpt page? Not a pretty method, but I thought it would work, but couldn't figure out how to set it up.

I tried to overwrite the chart input and redirected it to an iGrid and that didn't throw errors, but also didn't work (I didn't really expect it to work).

Any suggestions are welcome, no matter how convoluted. Since this will only process once an hour at most, I am less interested in speed than in functionality.

Thanks,

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

No such capability in BLS, Mike. However, it is pretty easy to use SVG to recreate the "ColumnLights" capability (should take less than your desired hour, if you're comfortable with SVG).

If you know the # of rows in advance, you can create a single AnimatedObject/SVGObject to create it.

If you do not know the # of rows in advance, you can create SVG "snippets" and an SVG container, and use the repeater to loop through the query results, update the SVG "snippet" (via XML assignment links), and append the snippet to the "container" using XML append links.

Then, use the SVG Renderer to generate an image.

It's actually a lot easier than it sounds.

Rick

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Rick,

That is an interesting (and elegant) solution. Our datasets should be stable as far as row and column counts go. I may give that a try just for the practice in building an SVG. As I told Sascha, we are going to use VC to build the ColumnLights equivalent.

Even if I don't get to doing it during this project, I will certainly keep it in mind for the future.

Thanks for the suggestion

Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Shoot me your e-mail (somehow) and I think I might have an example for you.

Rick

[sufw]

Hi Michael,

as far as I know, the iGrid doesn't have an image-conversion method like the iChart does...

You could write a client-side program (e.g. in VB, .Net, etc.) which takes screenprints of a browser window and saves them on a network drive. There's a convoluted solution for you

Sascha

[agentry_src]

Sascha,

We thought of those options, but we finally decided to use VC to build the data presentation as this is something that it can do pretty well with a bit of programming. Unfortunately it doesn't handle SVGs as well as xMII or we would do them there as well.

Thanks for the response,

Mike