ReportLab

I’ve been side-tracked by a project to generate fairly complex multi-thousand page reports. Python and ReportLab are my go-to standards for this type of project.

I needed to create a plugin for the ReportLab RML templating language to render dynamic Matplotlib charts.

I’m ready to get back to Elixir after spending the last few weeks using Python and ReportLab/RML to generate multi-thousand line PDF reports. The project is only about 2/3 finished and currently stalled waiting for client answers.

While coding the Python project I kept trying to think about how I’d approach the work in Elixir (assuming a ReportLab-style package was available). In order to create a ReportLab/RML report, I first create a (fairly large) blob of data containing information loaded from multiple .csv files and then arranged and summarized multiple ways.

In Python I use multiple classes (a base class contains many attributes that are themselves classes). Historically, I’d tend to use dictionaries instead of classes, but I also used an IDE (VS Code) for the first time and wanted to get the IDE hints as well as type hint everything.

In Elixir:

A short break while I return to the land of Python and ReportLab PDF generation. This is my first time using the commercial ReportLab PLUS markup language (RML). Already have about 1,500 lines of RML generating multi-hundred page reports.

I’ll be doing some reading homework with the early release version of Elixir in Action, Third Edition by Saša Jurić.

Plan to be back in April.