Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails

✍ Scribed by David Berube

• Publisher: Apress
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 313
• Series: Expert's voice in open source
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In less than 300 pages, the author skims the field of reporting with Ruby on Rails. Not meant as an authoritative reference nor a tutorial on the Ruby language nor Rails framework, David points to useful utilities and gems that let the developer deliver analyzed, summarized, processed data in many formats. For a great many applications, in the view of the users, the reports ARE the application, so getting the right format and right data presentation are essential. David briefly touches on the database fundamentals and then dives right into a set of practical and easily-understood examples using common data (eBay, PayPal, SugarCRM) and demonstrates how to create output in the most demanded formats: web pages, PDFs, graphs, and the office formats. With a topic so broad and a book of moderate size, David trades depth for breadth and does a great job of pointing out many Rails idioms and useful 3rd party tools.Disclaimer: David's an associate of mine and arranged for a review copy of the book.

✦ Table of Contents

Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails......Page 1
Contents at a Glance......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
About the Author......Page 13
About the Technical Reviewer......Page 15
Acknowledgments......Page 17
Introduction......Page 19
Choosing a Database......Page 23
Using Active Record As a Database Access Library......Page 25
Calculating Player Salaries......Page 26
Dissecting the Code......Page 29
Calculating Player Wins......Page 31
Dissecting the Code......Page 35
Summary......Page 37
Grouping and Aggregation......Page 39
Analyzing Data with Grouping and Aggregates......Page 42
Calculating Salary Distribution......Page 45
Calculating Drink/Win Distribution......Page 46
Dissecting the Code......Page 50
Summary......Page 51
Choosing a Graphing Utility......Page 53
Creating a Line Chart......Page 57
Dissecting the Code......Page 63
Creating a Line Chart......Page 65
Dissecting the Code......Page 68
Summary......Page 69
Choosing a Desktop Format......Page 71
Generating an Excel Spreadsheet......Page 72
Creating a Spreadsheet Report......Page 73
Dissecting the Code......Page 76
Creating GUIs with Ruby......Page 80
Using FXRuby......Page 81
Dissecting the Code......Page 82
Graphing Team Performance on the Desktop......Page 83
Dissecting the Code......Page 88
Summary......Page 93
Choosing a Web Framework......Page 95
Live Intranet Web Reporting with Rails......Page 96
Creating a Migration......Page 98
Adding the Data......Page 101
Creating the Models for the Web Report......Page 102
Creating the View for the Web Report......Page 105
Examining the Web Report Application......Page 107
Dissecting the Code......Page 109
Graphical Reporting with Rails......Page 111
Creating the Controller for the Graphical Report......Page 112
Creating the Models for the Graphical Report......Page 115
Creating the View for the Graphical Report......Page 116
Examining the Graphical Reporting Application......Page 119
Dissecting the Code......Page 120
Summary......Page 127
Using eBay APIs......Page 131
Obtaining Competitive Intelligence via eBay Web Services......Page 133
Installing Hpricot and LaTeX......Page 134
Coding the eBay Report......Page 135
Dissecting the eBay Web Services Code......Page 142
Dissecting the PDF Creation......Page 148
Summary......Page 151
Gathering Data from PayPal......Page 153
Reporting PayPal Expenses......Page 156
Using FasterCSV......Page 157
Converting PayPal CSV Data......Page 158
Dissecting the Code......Page 161
Analyzing the Data......Page 164
Dissecting the Code......Page 168
Summary......Page 173
Installing SugarCRM......Page 175
Updating the Database......Page 176
Creating PDFs from HTML Documents......Page 177
Dissecting the Code......Page 182
Summary......Page 189
Writing a Small Server to Get Report Data......Page 191
Creating an XML Server with Mongrel......Page 193
Dissecting the Code......Page 196
Creating the Graphical XML Ticker......Page 200
Dissecting the Code......Page 203
Summary......Page 207
Calculating Costs by Analyzing Apache Web Logs......Page 209
Speeding Up Insertions with ActiveRecord::Extensions......Page 210
Creating PDFs with PDF::Writer......Page 211
Cost-Per-Sale Reporting......Page 212
Creating the Controllers......Page 213
Creating the Layout and Views......Page 218
Setting Up the Database and Schema......Page 221
Examining the Log Analyzer and Cost-Per-Sale Report......Page 223
Dissecting the Code......Page 226
Summary......Page 232
Tracking the News with Google News......Page 235
Using FeedTools to Parse RSS......Page 236
Loading the Data......Page 237
Dissecting the Code......Page 242
Creating the News Tracker Report Application......Page 246
Dissecting the Code......Page 250
Summary......Page 252
Interacting with Microsoft Office......Page 253
Working with Microsoft Word......Page 254
Importing Web-Form Data into an Access Database......Page 256
Creating the Web Interface......Page 257
Dissecting the Code......Page 268
Importing the XML Data into Microsoft Access......Page 271
Dissecting the Code......Page 276
Summary......Page 280
Tracking Your Ads with Google AdWords......Page 281
Obtaining Google AdWords Reports......Page 282
Loading the XML into a Database......Page 287
Dissecting the Code......Page 289
Creating the AdWords Campaign Reporter Application......Page 292
Dissecting the Code......Page 298
Summary......Page 304
Index......Page 305