User`s guide

Fill the Blanks in a Report Form

13-29

Fill the Blanks in a Report Form

Navigate Holes in the Form

When you create a form template, you associate an ID with each hole in the template.

This allows you to navigate the holes in a form, using the DOM moveToNextHole

function. The first time you execute this function, the DOM API copies to the output

document all of the text up to the first hole in the template. At this point, you can start

adding content to the output document, using this DOM append function, thereby filling

in the first hole. The next time you execute this function, the DOM API copies all the text

between the first and second hole in the template to the output document. You can then

fill in the second hole by appending content to the output document. In this way, you

generate the output document by copying the content from the template and filling in all

its holes.

For example, this function generates a report from a Word template that has three holes

named Title, Author, and Content. The arguments title, author, and content, are

assumed to be strings.

function makerpt(title,author,content,rptname,rpttemplate)

import mlreportgen.dom.*

rpt = Document(rptname,'docx',rpttemplate);

while ~strcmp(rpt.CurrentHoleId,'#end#')

switch rpt.CurrentHoleId

case 'Title'

append(rpt,title);

case 'Author'

append(rpt,author);

case 'Content'

append(rpt,content);

end

moveToNextHole(rpt);

end

close(rpt);