I have been asked how we could publish the graphics from Footprints reports
every day on our intranet website.

I have been sending out FP-reports-with-graphics via email every day for more
than a year and they like them so much they want to publish them daily.

Is the use of API's, as outlined by Mark below, the simplest way to get that
job done?

AIX/Apache/Oracle DB installation.

Bill Linhart
FootPrints Application System Admin

--- In fpusergroup@yahoogroups.com, Mark Montague <markmont@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:13 AM, "David Brown" <brownd4@...> wrote:
> >
> > I think I need to bite the bullet and learn how to use external
> > scripts in Footprints.
> > Was hoping someone could give me a few pointers.
> >
> > I need to use some IF,Then type statements to compare field values.
> > Also I will be writing values to some fields.
> >
> > What scripting language should I use?
>
> What operating system are you using on your FootPrints server? Bourne
> Shell would be a good scripting language if you're using Linux, but a
> bad choice if you're using Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Powershell
> would be a good choice if you're using Microsoft Windows, but a bad
> choice if you're on Linux.
>
> I'll go ahead and recommend Perl. Although Perl is much more complex
> and harder to learn than most scripting languages, time you spend in
> Perl will pay off doubly, since FootPrints itself is written in Perl:
> time you spend learning Perl will allow you to understand, troubleshoot,
> and support FootPrints better. Also, Perl is cross-platform, so you'll
> be protecting your investment of time by learning something that runs
> under pretty much *any* operating system.
>
>
> > What is the syntax, for that language, to get a fields value from an
> > issue, or to write a value to a field in an issue?
>
> One way to do this is to access the FootPrints database directly.
> However, Numara provides a simpler way -- see the chapter on the
> FootPrints command-line API in the FootPrints Reference Manual. The
> chapter describes a bunch of stand-alone programs that can be called
> from your script. You set up a few environment variables, invoke the
> external program from your script, and get back the result.
>
>
> By the way, none of this is for the faint of heart. If you don't want
> to invest a good amount of time and effort into learning and getting
> things working -- if you just want to get a certain result quickly and
> with minimal pain -- then hire a programmer to do it for you. Hiring a
> student from a local University can be a good way to get this type of
> work done quickly and cheaply.
>
> Mark Montague
> ITCS Web/Database Team
> The University of Michigan
> markmont@...
>