Hi all,
My client asked for some nicer reports that don't look so "excel-ish", specifically they wanted to see some nice looking 3D charts along with their data in a PDF format.
So, I worked on trying to create some nice mockup charts using the CFChart command, which I haven't used in a few years. I discovered the whole WebCharts3D series of charts, and was fairly impressed with the flexibility it had. So, I created an HTML page with my data and my new charts, and used CFDocument to make them a PDF. They looked great! Nice gradients on the backgrounds, my client's logo at the top of each chart, pie charts that jump out of the page at you... I got more than a few "wow's".
Then, I had to do it for real, and quickly saw that using CFDocument does not allow you to print page headers and footers when the report is more than a page long. I played for quite a while with google searches and CSS tricks to get it to happen, but it just isn't there yet - you can't get multiple footers to print (although you can get multiple headers - but it's hokey). Not to mention problems of the page break cutting off a line of text (maybe solvable, but at what cost? hours more of my time). So, I gave up using the CFDocument tag for our reports.
Then I tried the CF Report Builder. I have had some teething issues, but have been able to get a basic report at least, complete with my client's logo and watermark, and a pie chart. However, the pie chart looks terrible compared to the slick WebCharts3D pie chart that I did before. Plus, I haven't been able to get a bar chart work off of a passed in query yet, but I could probably get through that on my own.
To my question. Can you use a Webcharts3D chart in a CFReport? or, in other words, can you use CFChart in a CFReport?
If I cannot, I think I'm in big trouble, as the client thinks I can create these nice charts in a slew of new reports they want me to write... and I'll have to tell them that it's not possible? After I've already shown them what CFDocument can do?
Thanks in advance...
Swift