how to display a table of dynamic data (report) that both works in Simulator plus can be emailed out?

[greg886]

What’s the best way to display formatted static content to a user in Corona SDK?  For example for your help page.  So my specific requirements are:

 

Mandatory

a) needs to support Simulator (to iterate during development and seeing layout)

b) support passing in the data dynamically via variable (would be layout of static data with dynamic data at appropriate points).  So HTML is one approach but if using this would want to be able to pass the HTML as a string variable  (i.e. not have to save it to file for the sake of it).

c) be placed within a newScrollView to be scrollable

 

Highly Desirable

d) can be used to send (e.g. email) a copy of the report to a user 

e) allow a level of dynamic width/height/position adjustment (e.g. for orientation change)

Question - Anything available to do this?  If I have “roll-my-own” I’m wondering what approach?

 

 

Re options my understanding is:

i) PDF - no way to create PDFs in Corona

ii) HTML view (newWebView) - doesn’t work in the simulator / can’t include in a display object / needs to be in a file (can’t pass it a HTML string)

iii) Using text objects (e.g. newText) - no way to then “email” it out

iv) other???

 

 

 

Background:

 

The newWebView doesn’t seem to support the above hence my question.    I get this on my Mac when building the WebViewPhysics sample project.

native.newWebView() does not work in the Corona Simulator. Please build for device (or Xcode simulator) for this sample to work properly.

 

Wanted to avoid having to use multiple newText() type elements, then having to reposition them etc.  The content will have some static and dynamic components to it.

 

Also using HTML would make it useful to be able to the email the page too (e.g. like a report).

 

 

[roaminggamer]

I’m not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but I did a module called MLText a long time ago (back in the Graphics 1.0 days) that allowed one to display simple HTML as formatted text.  

Now, it wasn’t a great solution, but it might be a starting point for a roll-your-own solution, even if all you kept was the html.lua utilities.

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4R2-7gJciY

Here is a link: https://github.com/roaminggamer/RG_FreeStuff/blob/master/MLText/MLText.zip

Here is a link to rest of my free stuff too: https://github.com/roaminggamer/RG_FreeStuff

Oh, and if you come up with an awesome solution, I’d love to hear about it, so please post back here if you can.

[greg886]

thats exactly the sort of thing I’ve been fishing for…   Effectively I’m after a way to display the same info on the app, as well as email it out too.  The only issue I’m thinking is that for my in-app view of the data I want to be updating it rapidly, as items in the table (kind of a mini spreadsheet view of numbers/currency) will change as a slider is moved.  So I’m now thinking the webview concept might not be a good idea anyone.

I’m currently thinking I’ll need to write a separate module, like a report module, that holds data to be displayed, and then have two separate functions.  One to give the report back in HTML, and the other to give it back as a Display Object with newText items in it for in app views.

[roaminggamer]

I’m not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but I did a module called MLText a long time ago (back in the Graphics 1.0 days) that allowed one to display simple HTML as formatted text.  

Now, it wasn’t a great solution, but it might be a starting point for a roll-your-own solution, even if all you kept was the html.lua utilities.

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4R2-7gJciY

Here is a link: https://github.com/roaminggamer/RG_FreeStuff/blob/master/MLText/MLText.zip

Here is a link to rest of my free stuff too: https://github.com/roaminggamer/RG_FreeStuff

Oh, and if you come up with an awesome solution, I’d love to hear about it, so please post back here if you can.

[greg886]

thats exactly the sort of thing I’ve been fishing for…   Effectively I’m after a way to display the same info on the app, as well as email it out too.  The only issue I’m thinking is that for my in-app view of the data I want to be updating it rapidly, as items in the table (kind of a mini spreadsheet view of numbers/currency) will change as a slider is moved.  So I’m now thinking the webview concept might not be a good idea anyone.

I’m currently thinking I’ll need to write a separate module, like a report module, that holds data to be displayed, and then have two separate functions.  One to give the report back in HTML, and the other to give it back as a Display Object with newText items in it for in app views.