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The demo project

The source tree ships a small, self-contained Django project in demo/ that exercises everything described in this manual. It runs on SQLite, so no services are needed.

$ make demo             # stock Django admin,     http://127.0.0.1:8000/
$ make demo-grappelli   # django-grappelli admin, http://127.0.0.1:8001/
$ make demo-reset       # throw the demo database away

Each target runs migrate, then seed_demo, then runserver. Log into the admin as admin / admin.

Without make:

$ python demo/manage.py migrate
$ python demo/manage.py seed_demo
$ python demo/manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000

demo/manage.py puts the repository root on sys.path itself, so the demo always exercises the working copy of flexible_reports, not a release installed in the environment.

Both flavours share one project and one database; they differ only in the settings module (demo.settings_django vs demo.settings_grappelli).

What the demo shows

demoapp defines Author and Book(title, author, year, pages, price) and manage.py seed_demo fills them with ten books, then builds a complete report definition -- all of it visible and editable in the admin under Flexible reports.

Two datasources, one per query language:

  • Long books -- DjangoQL, pages > {{ min_pages }}: a parametrised query whose value comes from Report.set_context(), with sample_context supplying an example for save-time validation.
  • Everything by Ursula K. Le Guin -- django-dsl, author = "Ursula K. Le Guin", where author is a shortcut declared as Book.django_dsl_shortcuts.

One table with six columns, reused by all three report elements: a template-only column using row_counter, a column mixing value with record, two dot-notation columns crossing the foreign key, a plain sortable column and a numeric column with totals. Two ColumnOrder rows give it a default sort (year descending, then title). The sort option is sort with other tables, so clicking a header re-sorts all three tables at once.

A report with three elements, the last of which uses except catchall -- everything the two datasources did not pick up.

The rendering side is two files:

# demo/demoapp/views.py
report = Report.objects.get(slug=settings.DEMO_REPORT_SLUG)
report.set_base_queryset(Book.objects.select_related("author"))
report.set_context({"min_pages": settings.DEMO_MIN_PAGES})
return render(request, "demo/index.html", {"report": report})

{# demo/templates/demo/index.html #}
{% load flexible_reports_tags %}
{% flexible report %}

seed_demo is idempotent: sample data is upserted and the report definition is deleted and rebuilt. Break the report in the admin, re-run the command, and you are back to a known state.

See demo/README.md in the source tree for the full walkthrough, including the two lines that make the grappelli flavour work.