I've researched this issue and have not found anything to meet my needs. I am worried that perhaps I'm using the wrong terms.
I would like to build a website interface that allows users to select different variables and then have those variables dynamical or automatically graphed or charted. I need it to be able to handle 100+ variables (there could be limits to how many were charted at one time) and display the data on a bar graph, pie chart, or line graph based on the users preference.
What would I need to make this happen?
Sounds like you need to use either Flash and ActionScript or JavaScript and HTML5.
I've been looking to do something like this too actually.
Need a facility for parsing the data, and then working out scales/ratios and to represent the data in a coherent way, with labels. Then you need to scale the shapes your using according to the scale that the data is covering, and for the sizes to naturally be proportional.
Related
I hope it’s Ok to post a complete naive question here for LO or OO experts.
I’m looking for advice on whether scripting LibreOffice or OpenOffice would be suitable for the following:
General Question
I’m looking to generate PDF reports, based on a combination of a “template” and a set of data (currently in JSON format) and inserted images.
This would act as a headless service that gets invoked when necessary from a web server, when a user requests a PDF report (on linux).
We have a need to frequently modify/customise/generate new templates, hence the reluctance to go down a route of using something like Reportlab (plus I don't know Reportlab at all, so face huge learning curve that way
Background
This is in contrast to using an approach of using a PDF library like Reportlab directly within the web server, and having to build up the template/report programmatically.
As LibreOffice/OpenOffice is obviously a lot faster for generating good looking report "templates", this is a question about doing both the template generation, plus final template + data -> PDF generation all directly within LibreOffice.
Some more specifics
The data values would mostly either be substituted into fields in the template, with no to minimal processing of values required.
However, there would be situations where some of the data is in “sets” that would be shown in a table type view, and the number of fields (and so number of table rows for instance) would need to vary per report, based on the number of values in that particular JSON data.
Additionally, I’d need to be able to include (“import”) images into the report. Some of the JSON data would be paths to image files, and I’d like to include those. Again for these, the number of image may vary between each report.
This wouldn't be high frequency at all, so would not need to run either LO/OO as a service, but could simply invoke when required with a sys call. Conceptually something like "LibreOffice --template 'make_fancy.report' <data.json> <output_file.pdf>"
If this approach would be reasonable in either LO or OO, what languages are best to script in? (Hopefully python3).
I need to create a system to store and serve information about survey questions. Given a variety of questions, field types and field arrangments, I need to serve the data needed by the front end to display the fields.
One of my big concerns is layout information. I'm not sure all the ways the fields can be arranged. At a minimum, I need to support things like two text fields appearing on 1 line, with a third on the next line. Or 6 multiple choice answers arranged in 2 columns of 3 rows.
Is it appropriate to store this layout information in my database, and to serve it with the question/field data? I think these are my 3 options. Any thoughts on these options would be very helpful, or suggestions for other things to consider:
I could store indicators that the question uses a column layout, and give each field hints as to what row/column it is in.
I could store something like CSS or mustache templates to define the layout.
I could leave this entirely to the front end. I could return the survey data and expect the front end to handle any layout concerns
The general answer/advice i would give is no. If you put any layout information in the database you will make it very hard to build new functionality, extend your product offering in the future, support multiple front ends (mobile, progressive web app, main website) and perform redesigns in the future.
I would go with option C. Leave it to the front end. You can easily store the 'type' of question which may map to a template in the front end maybe, this will allow the different front ends to render that type of template as the design needs. And will allow you to easily evolve the design in the future, the last thing you want if you desire to do a redesign is to need DB update scripts to try and 'fix' css and display data.
Obviously i lack the full picture of what you are trying to achieve, the road map of your product and your future ideas, but i honestly cant think of a scenario where storing css in the DB would be a good idea.
I hope you find this useful, I would be keen to hear how you decide to progress with this.
Is google analytics custom variable a good way to segment different parts of a very large site? Currently they are just segmented and filtered by title tag but we'd like to get both a specific look at what pages are viewed in segments as well as the overall health of each segment. I've seen where it says that google custom variables can be overwritten, is this going to cause a problem for getting accurate results?
You can use custom variables for segmentation (that's what they are for), but in standard GA there are only five customs vars in three different scopes (page, session, visitor) and variables in different scopes but the same "slot" might interfere with each other. So using custom vars requires more thought and more testing than one would think (especially since you will get results in any case, so you need good tests to separate data from noise).
So you might want to investigate some of the more straightforward options first - if your site is strictly hierachical you might be able to use the url scheme, or something like that, this should do anything that can be achieved by page scope custom vars.
If you want to segment by user behaviour during a visit, or multiple recurring visits, you'll have to use session- and visitor scope custom variables. If at all possible do not re-use different "slots" (custom vars are numbered from 1 to 5) in different scopes.
I'm interested in displaying 1-5 model instances using forms on a page using a grid similar to something one would find in a desktop database application. I understand I would need to use multiple forms or formsets but an additional requirement is that I'd prefer it to be in more of a grid format with each model's fields being display in columns with common field labels on the y-axis.
I should have the ability to edit multiple columns (so in effect, model instances) at the same time and then commit either the single column (model instance) or commit all. I'd also like to be able to highlight the changed cells that have changed to give visual feedback to the user that there are pending changes.
Sorry for the rather long list of requirements and I'm aware this probably requires a few different technologies/techniques to achieve. I'm throwing this out there because I'm asking this kind community for guidance on what components/technologies I should look at. If luck would have it, there would be some jQuery component that can handle this for me almost out of the box. If not, some guidance on achieving the editing of multiple model instances would be of help.
I will also need to build in versioning in case the data displayed on the view page is stale and to prevent overwriting a newer commit. I'd probably achieve the latter using a versioning field in the table that will perform the check and handle it accordingly.
Also, Flask and Django are both options for the engine and WTForms look to be promising at least at first look.
Thanks
There is no such ready to use solution in Django. Just create your custom form that handles as many instances as you want and do anything that you want, or extend formset.
I am trying to write an app that searches a website, and takes all of the results and puts them into a customized table. I am an Objective-C and iPhone SDK noob, and am hoping that this logic is what I am trying to accomplish:
1) Searching multiple search engines and pulling all of the data off of each website, storing each into a different array (for example: Searching Google, Yahoo, and Bing for "Shoes", and taking all of the different search results, hyperlinks and all, and storing them into three different arrays)
2) Pulling the data out of each array, and putting into a table (Table view in Interface Builder)
I am assuming that I need to declare global variables, so that they can be called from different classes......right?
What's the syntax for doing this?
How do I set this up in IB?
Did I bite off more than I can chew for this first app?
Thanks for your help!
Aaron, I also think you're biting off more than you can chew WRT a single question on SO, but let me point you to a resource I wrote on a similar topic about how to structure your program.
As an Obj-C noob, you're going to need to take extra care to remember the Model-View-Controller pattern. Extracting data from a web site is a bit of work - and you want to keep that very separate from your display and control code.
Have a clean API model that extracts and sorts data, and have a clear view controller class that reads data from the API.
My advice is to write the whole app in psuedo-code first and try out your thinking on us.