Home Quick Start How To Demos List

Quick Start

1. Making Your First Project

Let’s start from the simplest (and now existing) project. Suppose that you have to prepare a great number of reports in W9 form. You have already found a sample PDF file with W9 form on the Internet and you have XML file exported from your database. Your task is to prepare reports from these data.

Try to repeat creating one of sample projects W9 step-by-step.

So, start the application. As soon as it has started a new project is created.
Prepare a new folder in “All Users\Documents\VisualXSL Projects” for it. Call it “1stTry”. Copy “w9src.xml” and “w9_blank.pdf” files from “All Users\Documents\VisualXSL Projects” to new directory.
Add data source (File -> Open Source XML), select “w9src.xml” from a newly created folder. Mind that node “batch/W9” is set as Pattern property by application in page properties after the last step. Save your project as “1stTry.vxl”.
Click on the design layout. Then page properties will be shown in the appropriate window. Select BackgroundPath property, click (…) button and open “w9_blank.pdf” file. Application will show its rasterized image on design layout.
See flash-movie illustrating steps from 1 to 4

Application screenshot. Creating project

Fig.1.1 BackgroundPath property for a new project page

Find in XML tree “name” node, drag and drop it to the layout. Place and resize it to fit template in background form.
Switch to its properties. Expand InnerText property, then TextProperties. Change its font settings clicking the (…) button. You can change formatting not only for one data field at a time but for all data fields on the whole page (once specific formatting is not already set for data field). As you are going to add data fields with the same formatting, change page formatting properties (TextProperties->Font Arial; 10pt).

Application screenshot. Data field formatting properties

Fig.1.2 Text formatting properties of the selected data field

So the first steps are made. It is time to see what you will get as a result. Click preview button in toolbar and switch to Log window. You can monitor the formatting process by tracing messages from XEP formatter. In a second you will have the preview of resulting document.
Drag and drop the rest of XML nodes to layout (except the ones corresponded to checkboxes). Resize them to fit empty spaces on the background. Do not bother with additional formatting so far, you will do it later. Then your project should look like the one from the screenshot (Fig.1.2).
But your project is still far from being perfect. There must be marks done in empty squares (they should be rendered under certain conditions), the address must be correctly formed from city, state, and ZIP node values; the data field with SSN (or employes indentification number) should be justified across the appropriate rectangle. See flash-movie illustrating steps from 5 to 9
First of all correct the data field with city name. You should change the property Pattern to “batch/W9” and InnerText->XPathValue to “concat(city,', ',state,' ',zip)” to do it. So XSL code will be generated in template with attribute match=“batch/W9” and also will render data getting by XPath expression “concat(city,', ',state,' ',zip)”. See flash-movie illustrating step 10
Moreover you should make checkmarks in appropriate boxes. For getting that, select the XML node “batch/W9” and choose Data->Add CheckBox from the menu. Switch to the property Test of the created field and type in the following: “entity_type = 'individual'” (XPath expression to be used as the condition to render the field). So the field will be rendered only if the condition is true. Repeat this procedure for the rest of checkboxes, setting the Test property correspondingly “entity_type = 'corporation'”, “entity_type = 'partnership'” and “entity_type = 'other'”. See flash-movie illustrating step 11
And the last step is correcting of social id number placing. Select soc_sec_number in the XML tree and drag it to the layout. Resize it to fit the grid on the background.
Choose BlockProperties –>AlignLast property and change its value to “Justify”, to set spaces between digits properly. Make a preview of the project. Now you are supposed to have result similar to sample W9 project one (except barcodes). See flash-movie illustrating steps from 12 to 13

Application screenshot. First try - draft look

Pic.1.3 Unfinished project (no checkmarks, bad address, etc)

2. Creating a New Project from the Scratch

Now you should prepare XML source and PDF background by yourself. It is not as difficult as it seems. To complete this tutorial you must have Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 (or greater) installed. You will use Microsoft Excel to prepare XML source file and Microsoft Word to make an invitation letter form. You are supposed to prepare and mail anniversary party invitations to all company managers from name of its CEO. All employees’ information is stored in Excel spreadsheet (see Fig.2.1). The letter should look like the one on the Fig. 2.1 and you should be able either to print it and to e-mail it as an electronic document.

Fig.2.1 The invitation letter

Fig.2.2 Data in the Excel spreadsheet

First of all create XML source file. You should have some XML schema to be able to map data to XML tags and export it to XML file. The simplest way to do that is to prepare a little XML file describing the common structure of your data.

Your XML file should look like following one (you can omit some elements not necessary for your task). Write down XML node corresponding to data record twice to make MS Excel understand that this node can be replicated many times. Here it is:

<LastName>Davolio</LastName>

<FirstName>Nancy</FirstName>

<Title>Sales Representative</Title>

<City>Seattle</City>

</record>

<LastName>Davolio</LastName>

<FirstName>Nancy</FirstName>

<Title>Sales Representative</Title>

<City>Seattle</City>

</record>

</employees>

Attach new XML map by doing the following:

1) Open XML source tab by selecting Data >> XML >> XML Source.

2) Then click on “XML maps…” button that will bring up the window with XML map list.

3) Add a new one by clicking “Add…” button and selecting the prepared XML file as XML source.

4) When a warning message that no XML schema is referred to this file appears, just click “Ok” and Excel will create schema automatically.

Fig. 2.3 Warning that Microsoft Excel will create a schema based on selected XML file.

Now you have to map all XML elements to spreadsheet data columns. After you have finished that you can export the spreadsheet to XML.

Fig. 2.4 XML elements mapped to Microsoft Excel spreadsheet data columns.

Save your spreadsheet as XML file to your project folder.

It is time to prepare PDF document that should be used as the background. Use Microsoft Word text processor and create a document with space left for data to be changed. The document may look like this one (see Fig.2.5). Save it as an XML (WordML) file.

Fig. 2.5 Letter with space left for employee personal data

Use XEP Assistant and WordML2FO stylesheets from XEPWin package to produce a PDF file from your mockup. Finally you have all necessary files to create a new project.

3. Preparing XML File: Exporting Data from SQL Server

Let's make an example using test database Northwind. We will use Query Analyzer (Microsoft SQL Server 2000) for data conversion.

Open SQL Query Analyzer (Microsoft SQL Server 7/2000). Connect to database Northwind.
We will convert data from table Employees (see Fig.3.1).

Fig. 3.1 Data in Employees table

Let’s assume, that a file with converting data should be placed here c:\temp\
Create in this folder conversion template file “template.tpl” using any text editor.
Write down there following

<root>

<%begindetail%>

<%insert_data_here%>

<%enddetail%>

</root>

Put (type or paste) the following query into SQL Query Analyzer window (see Fig.3.2):

EXEC sp_makewebtask @outputfile = 'c:\temp\myxmlfile.xml',

@query = 'select * from Employees for xml auto',

@templatefile = 'c:\temp\template.tpl'

Where:

@outputfile - a full way to file XML.

@query – sql query for necessary data

@templatefile - the file template on which will be made XML a file.

Run the query by pressing F5 or select Query -> Execute from menu.

As result of query execution you will have a “myxmlfile.xml” file in the folder c:\temp\

Fig. 3.2 Query to export table data

8. Finally, we have Employees table data exported to XML format (see Fig.3.2).

Fig.3.3 Resulting XML file