User`s guide

Simplify Filling in Forms

13-39

Simplify Filling in Forms

The object-oriented approach allows you to exploit the DOM fill method to simplify

form-based reporting. The fill method is intended to be used with instances of classes

derived from mlreportgen.dom.Document or mlreportgen.dom.DocumentPart

class. It assumes that for each hole in a document or document part template the derived

class defines a method having the following signature:

fillHoleId(obj)

The HoleID part of the signature is the ID of a hole defined by the document or

document part template. The obj argument is an instance of the derived class. For

example, supposed that a template defines a hole named Author. Then the derived class

would define a method name fillAuthor to fill the Author hole. Assuming that the

derived class defines methods for filling the holes, the fill method moves from the first

hole in the document or part to the last, invoking the corresponding fillHoleId method

to fill each hole.

The fill method eliminates the need for a report program to loop explicitly through

the holes in a document or document part's template. The report need only invoke the

document or part fill method. For example, suppose that you have derived a report

class, name MyReport, from the mlreportgen.dom.Document class and that this

derived class defines methods for each of the holes defined by the report template, based

on data supplied in its constructor. Then, you would need only three lines to generate an

instance of MyReport:

function makeReport(rptdata)

rpt = MyReport(rptdata);

fill(rpt);

close(rpt);

For an example of a forms-based, object-oriented report program, in the Examples pane

of the MATLAB Report Generator documentation, open the Object-Oriented Report

example.