Need reports with Lazarus

[UglyBloke]

Hi, I'm trying to get ANY banded report package installed into my recently installed Lazarus 1.6.4 (FPC 3.0.2, SVC 5 4 278).
  I am new to Lazarus but have many years used PolyPascal, TurboPascal and Delphi6, with DM Reportbuilder.
 I have tried the latest Fortes323 and Fortes424 (FortesReport4) packages but they will not compile using "Install Packages", errors include "Illegal Type conversions" and others.
Can anyone point to a working reporting package or indicate where my problems might be overcome.

[marcov]

lazreport comes with lazarus, being based on an older opensourced free/fastreport. That summarizes my experience on reports though.

[Graeme]

During the next 4-5 weeks Free Pascal will get its very own reporting engine (fpReport) - targeted at replacing LazReport. I wrote it from the ground up and has NO dependencies on GUI toolkit libraries (unlike all other reporting engines), so it will work very well in a headless server environment too. It has been used in a closed commercial environment for a couple months now. Even thought it will be released into FPC Trunk, the reporting code is very well tested against FPC 2.6.4 and FPC 3.0.2 too. So if you don't use FPC Trunk (not generally recommended), you can safely copy the fpReport directory to a external directory and use it with a stable FPC release.

I know it's not ideal news (fpReport not being instantly available), but if you can wait a little while, it will be well worth it.

[Handoko]

+1

Thanks Graeme for developing the report engine. I first knew it on FP & Lazarus Foundation website. Glad to hear it is now almost ready to be released.

[Graeme]

I got confirmation from the company that contracted me for the work, that they will be releasing it to Free Pascal any time during the next 6 weeks.

In the mean time, here are some PDF's generated by fpReport's 11 demos. There is also one real-world report "calendar_report.pdf".  fpReport can output to PDF, PNG, JPG and BMP - no external libraries required and no GUI toolkit dependencies.. The native streaming format (storage) is JSON.

  http://geldenhuys.co.uk/~graemeg/fpreport/

Edit:
   Please note I simply copied the PDF's from the last time I ran the fpReport demos (mid 2016 I believe).
   Since then I implemented much improved font and text support in Free Pascal PDF engine (fcl-pdf)
   package. So font issues are much less now (something you might experience if viewing the PDF's I shared
   using a Web Browser's built-in PDF support).

[marcinh]

I know that 6 weeks is passing by tomorrow, but are there any up-to-date information on this never-ending story of publicizing a fpreport?

[Graeme]

I know that 6 weeks is passing by tomorrow, but are there any up-to-date information on this never-ending story of publicizing a fpreport?

The fpReport code has already been moved out of the company source repository into a private Free Pascal repository. We cleaned up the demos and removed client (company) specific helper units not needed for FPC users. Michael van Canneyt wanted a smooth as possible uptake to fpReport, so insisted that a visual report designer exists - this is what caused the day. Good news is that there is now a visual report designer as well. There is one small todo item left on the visual report desiger side - regarding data integration. Michael is working on that, after which we will publish all the code in the FPC, Lazarus and fpGUI repositories. As a bonus, Michael wanted a better HTML report exporter, and implemented a very impressive one at that.

[JZS]

Michael is working on that, after which we will publish all the code in the FPC, Lazarus and fpGUI repositories. As a bonus, Michael wanted a better HTML report exporter, and implemented a very impressive one at that.

I am excited about this great news, but it seems it will take a while.
Is it possible to have a peek?

[talorigomat]

I'd also be interested in getting a look at it.

[JD]

I'm very glad to hear that lots of progress has been made with the native fpReport. Kudos to the development team. I'll be eagerly  looking forward to its release.

JD

[Pascal]

Graeme, any news on this?
I am also looking forward using this native report components and probably adding PDF/A-3 support.

[dymatrix]

Looking forward to seeing this.  I am in need of a reporting tool for Linux.  Plan on using a FreePascal cgi program to generate nicely formate PDF reports and letters needed in a small php application.

Cheers!