Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

✍ Scribed by David Berube

• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 314
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Business intelligence and real-time reporting mechanisms play a major role in any of today's forward-looking business plans. With many of these solutions being moved to the Web, the popular Rails framework and its underlying Ruby language are playing a major role alongside Web services in building the reporting solutions of tomorrow. Practical Reporting with Ruby and Rails is the first book to comprehensively introduce this popular framework, guiding readers through a wide-ranging array of features. Note this isn't a staid guide to generating traditional reports, but rather shows readers how the Ruby language and Rails framework can create truly compelling reporting services by plugging into popular third-party applications and services such as Google AdWords, UPS.com, iTunes, and SalesForce.com. See the following resources for more information on Ruby and Rails: Ruby project website: http://www.ruby-lang.org/ Rails Project web site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/

✦ Table of Contents

Prelims......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