Better way to implement an Access 2007 "HTML Report"

Question

I need to make a "static html" FAQ-like-document for internal use on a project.

I put all the items in an Access 2007 Database as records (question, answer, category) and then built a report that uses a sub-report to create a table of contents as internal links and then lists all of the questions and answers. This report is a bunch of text-areas with dynamically generated html code(apparently I don't have enough cred to post images yet so http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n299/SinbadEV/ReportCapture.png)... I just export the report to a text file and then rename it to .html and open it in a browser.

I'm thinking there has to be a less evil way to do this.

Answer 1

I used to spoof the report generator into making html documents for me but this approach has limitations. Firstly when you run the report, it generates rather ugly html and not a print ready report. There is more work after running the report to transform the report into a nice html document that can be opened in a word processor and then saved as a regular document. LibreOffice often is a better recipient of generated html documents than ms-word but occasionally LibreOffice fails to do the job (for a while it had issues with linked images). Word processors ignore css styles so don't bother with styles, direct formatting still works well, particularly for text is tables. If all the exported data is inside a html table, then use LibreOffice as LibreOffice can generate a table of contents based on h1, h2, h3 headings, whereas ms-word cannot.

These days, I just write the entire report as a procedure in a VBA standard module. I still do not use object oriented code and there is no reason to here. Reports written entirely in VBA can be far more sophisticated that what the standard ms-Access report designer can produce. Report designer reports take a lot of tinkering to get the format just right and this consumes time. For complex reports, the VBA approach is actually faster. A report written in VBA can be run every other second, so it is easy to adjust something such as the column width of a table and to rerun the report to check the output. A html report created with VBA is written out as a html file and the ms-access can issue a shell command to open the report in a web browser. If the browser is already open, the new report opens in a new tab so you can see what the previous version looked like as this version will still be open in another tab.

Write the report in a standard module (not in a form module) and call it from some button-click event on the form. The report should only need to be told what the title is, what the output filename and location are and the data scope that the report should output. The report procedure contains all other logic necessary for creating the report. Below is the calling procedure for triggering a report in one of my applications. The purpose of the calling code is to export a list of geotagged photos in a delimited text file so that I can plot the photo locations on a map. The process for exporting a html file is very similar. Some custom functions are in the code below but the structure should be recognisable.

Private Sub cmdCSV_File_Click()

    Dim FolderName As String
    Dim FileName As String
    Dim ReportTitle As String
    Dim SQL As String
    Dim FixedFields As String
    Dim WhereClause As String
    Dim SortOrder As String


    'Set destination of exported data
    FolderName = InputBox("Please enter name of folder to export to", AppName, mDefaultFolder)
    If mPaths.FolderExists(FolderName).Success Then
        mDefaultFolder = FolderName  'holds default folder name in case it is needed again
    Else
        MsgBox "Can't find this folder", vbCritical, AppName
        Exit Sub
    End If
    FileName = CheckTrailingSlash(FolderName) & "PhotoPoints.txt"

    'Set Report Title
    If Nz(Me.chkAllProjects, 0) Then
        ReportTitle = "Photos from all Projects"
    ElseIf Nz(Me.SampleID, 0) Then
        ReportTitle = "Photos from Sample " & Me.SampleID
    ElseIf Nz(Me.SurveyID, 0) Then
        ReportTitle = "Photos from Survey " & Me.SurveyID
    ElseIf Nz(Me.ProjectID, 0) Then
        ReportTitle = "Photos from Project " & Me.ProjectID
    Else
        MsgBox "Please select a scope before pressing this button", vbExclamation, AppName
        Exit Sub
    End If

    'Update paths to photos
    If Have(Me.ProjectID) Then
        WhereClause = " (PhotoPath_ProjectID = " & Me.ProjectID & ")"  'also covers sample and survey level selections
    Else
        WhereClause = " True"  'when all records is selected
    End If
    Call mPhotos.UpdatePhotoPaths(WhereClause) 'refreshes current paths

    'Set fixed parts of SQL statement
    FixedFields = "SELECT Photos.*, PhotoPaths.PhotoPath_Alias, PhotoPaths.CurrentPath & Photos.PhotoName AS URL, " _
    & "PhotoPaths.CurrentPath & 'Thumbs\'  & Photos.PhotoName as Thumb " _
    & "FROM Photos INNER JOIN PhotoPaths ON Photos.PhotoPathID = PhotoPaths.PhotoPathID WHERE "
    SortOrder = " ORDER BY ProjectID, SurveyID, SampleID, Photo_ID"

    'set scope for export
    WhereClause = "(((Photos.Latitude) Between -90 And 90) AND ((Photos.Longitude) Between -180 And 180) AND ((Photos.Latitude)<>0) AND ((Photos.Longitude)<>0)) AND " & WhereClause
    SQL = FixedFields & WhereClause & SortOrder & ";"

    'Export data as a delimited list
    FileName = ExportCSV(FileName, SQL)
    Call OpenBrowser(FileName)

End Sub

The next bit of code actually writes out the delimited text file (html just has tags instead of pipes). The vertical bar or pipe is used to separate the values rather than a comma in this case as commas may occur in the data. The code works out how many columns there are for itself and puts headings at the top.

    Public Function ExportCSV(FileAddress As Variant, SQL As String) As String
        If Not gDeveloping Then On Error GoTo procerr

        PushStack ("mfiles.ExportCSV")

        'Exports a csv file

        If Nz(FileAddress, "") = "" Then
            ExportCSV = "Failed"
            Exit Function
        End If

        'Create text file:
        Dim webfile As Object, w
        Set webfile = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
        Set w = webfile.CreateTextFile(FileAddress, True)

        Dim D As Database, R As Recordset, NumberOfFields As Long, Out As String, i As Long

        Set D = CurrentDb()
        Set R = D.OpenRecordset(SQL, dbOpenSnapshot)
        If R.RecordCount > 0 Then
            With R
            NumberOfFields = .Fields.Count - 1

            'Field headings
            For i = 0 To NumberOfFields
                If i = 0 Then
                    Out = .Fields(i).Name
                Else
                    Out = Out & "|" & .Fields(i).Name
                End If
            Next
            w.writeline Out

            'Field data
            Do Until .EOF
                For i = 0 To NumberOfFields
                If i = 0 Then
                    Out = .Fields(i)
                Else
                    Out = Out & "|" & .Fields(i)
                End If
                Next i
                w.writeline Out
                .MoveNext
            Loop
            End With
        End If

    Set R = Nothing
    Set D = Nothing

    ExportCSV = FileAddress

exitproc:
        PopStack
        Exit Function

procerr:
        Call NewErrorLog(Err.Number, Err.Description, gCurrentProc, FileAddress & ", " & SQL)
        Resume exitproc

End Function

Below is a snippet from the openbrowser function. The rest of the function deals with figuring out where the web browser is, as this varies with the version of windows and whether the browser is 32 or 64 bit.

'Set up preferred browser
If Right(BrowserPath, 9) = "Opera.exe" Then
    FilePrefix = "file://localhost/"
ElseIf Right(BrowserPath, 11) = "Firefox.exe" Then
    FilePrefix = "file:///"
Else
    FilePrefix = ""
End If

'Show report
Instruction = BrowserPath & " " & FilePrefix & WebpageName
TaskSuccessID = Shell(Instruction, vbMaximizedFocus)

This example contains about 90% of the code needed to create a html report that has its scope set by the form that calls it. Hope this gets someone over the hump.

Answer 2

I have now used an idea from SinbadEV and awrigley to create professionally looking HTML-reports in MS Access 2007. In my case I had to use yet another trick:

I found out, that due to some bug in MS Access it does not save the report correctly to txt format. Sometimes it drops a lot of information, even though it is displayed on the screen. I have also seen problem, mentioned here that sometimes access mixing lines. It seem to depend on several factors, e.g. whether report and a data span across pages in MS Acess report.

However I found, that exporting to *.rtf does work correctly. Therefore the approach is to craft MS Acess report, which, when saved into text file would create an HTML code (just like described by SinbadEV ), however you 1st need to save it to *rtf. After that you need to use MS Word automation to convert from *.rtf to txt file and to give it .html extention (In reality it does not take too much efforts).

Instead of MS word automation one can probably also use tool like Doxillion Document Converter to convert from rtf to text format from command line.

You can see database with this feature in the Meeting minutes, Issues, Risks, Agreements, Actions, Projects Tracking tool (http://sourceforge.net/projects/miraapt/).

Answer 3

I don't see anything inherently "evil" in what you are doing. I wrote an article for (the now defunct magazine) Smart Access that uses a similar technique for a different reason. The HTML report was a by product. Essentially, my technique allows using Access to create very extensive word documents that flow like typed text rather than looking like reports created using boxes.

You can still read the article on MSDN: Extending Access Reports With Word and HTML

The trick was to generate HTML using a report like you are doing, then using automation, open the .html file in Word and save it as RTF.

We used the technique to create a 300 page directory for the Diocese of York. It worked flawlessly.

Answer 4

Just in case you want to go the VBA way: I wrote a few functions that can make it quite easy:

• create queries containing the data you want to output,

• then open the query and loop through all records, outputting data to text file using function rRsToXml below.

  Option Compare Database
  Option Explicit
  
  Function fRsToXml(rs As Recordset, Optional ignorePrefix As String = "zz", _
                  Optional ignoreNulls As Boolean = False) As String
  '<description>  Returns an XML string with all fields of the current record,
  '               using field names as tags.
  '               Field names starting with "zz" (or other special prefix) are ignored</description>
  '<parameters>   rs: recordset (byRef, of course)</parameters>
  '<author>       Patrick Honorez - www.idevlop.com  </author>
      Dim f As Field, bPrefLen As Byte
      Dim strResult As String
      bPrefLen = Len(ignorePrefix)
      For Each f In rs.Fields
          If Left(f.Name, bPrefLen) <> ignorePrefix Then 'zz fields are ignored !
              If (Not ignoreNulls) Or (ignoreNulls And Not IsNull(f.Value)) Then
                  strResult = strResult & xTag(f.Name, f.Value) & vbCrLf
              End If
          End If
      Next f
      fRsToXml = strResult
  End Function
  
  Function xTag(ByVal sTagName As String, ByVal sValue, Optional SplitLines As Boolean = False) As String
  '<description>  Create an xml node and returns it as a string   </description>
  '<parameters>   <sTagName>  name of the tag </sTagName>
  '               <sValue>    string to embed </sValue>
  '               <SplitLine> True to include CrLf at the end of each line
  '                           (optional - default = False) </SplitLine></parameters>
  '<author>        Patrick Honorez - www.idevlop.com  </author>
  '<note>          Make sure sValue does not contains XML forbidden characters ! </note>
  '<changelog>
  '</changelog>
      Dim strNl As String, intAmp
      If SplitLines Then
          strNl = vbCrLf
      Else
          strNl = vbNullString
      End If
  
      xTag = "<" & sTagName & ">" & strNl & _
              Nz(sValue, "") & strNl & _
              "</" & sTagName & ">" '& strNl
  End Function
  
  Function CleanupStr(strXmlValue) As String
  '<description>  Replace forbidden char. &'"<> by their Predefined General Entities </description>
  '<author>       Patrick Honorez - www.idevlop.com  </author>
      Dim sValue As String
      If IsNull(strXmlValue) Then
          CleanupStr = ""
      Else
          sValue = CStr(strXmlValue)
          sValue = Replace(sValue, "&", "&amp;")  'do ampersand first !
          sValue = Replace(sValue, "'", "&apos;")
          sValue = Replace(sValue, """", "&quot;")
          sValue = Replace(sValue, "<", "&lt;")
          sValue = Replace(sValue, ">", "&gt;")
          CleanupStr = sValue
      End If
  End Function
  

Answer 5

There's an ExportXML method in the Application object, which can export database objects (tables,reports etc.) in XML. You'll need a XSL style sheet or a XSTL document if you want to format it for a browser:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb258194(v=office.12).aspx

I'd say this is the "canonical" way to do it. OTOH writing XSL & XSTL isn't like a fun thing to do and if you HTML generator works, then you should simply keep it like it is. (Actually, it's a nice trick IMHO).