Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Help merging two reports/print jobs

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Help merging two reports/print jobs

    I need advice on how to wrap my brain around this problem.

    This is a donor database for a small nonprofit.

    Table structure:
    Records (contact info, Primary key is an ID_Number, there is also a date field that tells if someone has a monthly "pledged" gift due soon)
    Contrib (donations, this links one to many from records by way of id_number)


    We want to send a letter to everyone who has given in a particular month (easy, we pull a filter of donations in a date range)
    We also want to send a letter to someone whose monthly gift is due and HASN'T given this month (also easy, filter by the date field in the records table).

    Currently this is two separate reports/letters, which we have sorted in zip code order for post office reasons.

    As a nonprofit, we get a bulk mail discounted rate, so each letter has to be in zipcode order. In my current setup, I am theoretically having to pull two separate print jobs of letters and having to manually merge them together.

    Is there a way to somehow get these two merged together? I have thought about creating a separate list of people who meet these criteria but can't get further than that). Any suggestions?

    #2
    You can create these two separate reports in xbasic then merge them using PDF_Merge(): https://documentation.alphasoftware....20Function.xml

    Would that work for you?
    Mike Brown - Contact Me
    Programmatic Technologies, LLC
    Programmatic-Technologies.com
    Independent Developer & Consultant​​

    Comment


      #3
      As Mike says pdf_merge() works well in xbasic and another function worth exploring is pdf_append_list() and the beauty of doing this in xbasic is you can do it all on the fly. ie generate both pdfs within the script, merge and save/email the finished pdf
      Glen Schild



      My Blog

      Comment


        #4
        I quickly scanned the recommended pages in the documentation - would this pdf_merge() allow the two reports to be combined and sorted by zip code?

        Actually, I tested out this function in the interactive window. pdf_merge seems to be more for adding watermarks to files, as my result pdf ended up being the two original pdfs literally printed on the same page, on top of each other. Not the desired outcome. Looking into other options.
        Last edited by aprescott; 09-29-2021, 02:34 PM.

        Comment


          #5
          Maybe PDF_Merge() has other functionality but regardless it will take two PDF's and merge them into one PDF. I do this exact thing with this method routinely in some of my own apps. PDF_Merge doesn't do anything with the data. You need to write the function to do all of that sorting, print the various reports to disk, then you can merge those reports into one PDF.

          Maybe I misunderstood you in the first post?
          Mike Brown - Contact Me
          Programmatic Technologies, LLC
          Programmatic-Technologies.com
          Independent Developer & Consultant​​

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by aprescott View Post
            I need advice on how to wrap my brain around this problem.

            This is a donor database for a small nonprofit.

            Table structure:
            Records (contact info, Primary key is an ID_Number, there is also a date field that tells if someone has a monthly "pledged" gift due soon)
            Contrib (donations, this links one to many from records by way of id_number)


            We want to send a letter to everyone who has given in a particular month (easy, we pull a filter of donations in a date range)
            We also want to send a letter to someone whose monthly gift is due and HASN'T given this month (also easy, filter by the date field in the records table).

            Currently this is two separate reports/letters, which we have sorted in zip code order for post office reasons.

            As a nonprofit, we get a bulk mail discounted rate, so each letter has to be in zipcode order. In my current setup, I am theoretically having to pull two separate print jobs of letters and having to manually merge them together.

            Is there a way to somehow get these two merged together? I have thought about creating a separate list of people who meet these criteria but can't get further than that). Any suggestions?
            I would do that in one report with some of the advanced reporting features of conditional objects and sub-reports.
            Al Buchholz
            Bookwood Systems, LTD
            Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

            Occam's Razor - KISS
            Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
            Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
            When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
            "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
            Albert Einstein

            http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

            Comment


              #7
              Exploring the pdf_append_list() route, but not sure how to get the file list in the format the function requires. I read elsewhere on the forum that it is looking for a crlf() list but I admit I'm not familiar with that.

              Currently I have a script that creates an array of donors and then loops through. If they meet one criteria (donation within date range), they get a report created and saved in a folder in the Webroot. If they meet the other criteria, they get a different report saved in the webroot folder.
              Wanting to then take the pdf_append_list to merge them into one long PDF (with about 1000 PDFs/pages).

              How do I get this file list in the necessary format?

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by aprescott View Post
                Exploring the pdf_append_list() route, but not sure how to get the file list in the format the function requires. I read elsewhere on the forum that it is looking for a crlf() list but I admit I'm not familiar with that.

                Currently I have a script that creates an array of donors and then loops through. If they meet one criteria (donation within date range), they get a report created and saved in a folder in the Webroot. If they meet the other criteria, they get a different report saved in the webroot folder.
                Wanting to then take the pdf_append_list to merge them into one long PDF (with about 1000 PDFs/pages).

                How do I get this file list in the necessary format?
                I believe you are going down the wrong rabbit hole.

                You need to readjust your approach.

                Contact me and I'll help you with a solution.

                [email protected]
                Al Buchholz
                Bookwood Systems, LTD
                Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

                Occam's Razor - KISS
                Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
                Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
                When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
                "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                Albert Einstein

                http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

                Comment

                Working...
                X