Scott Motte codes a lot

It looks like the rails session only stores 4k of data. If you have a large form, it might not work.

Looks like I?ll probably have to change to the database session

1. this guy has a solution
2. then you need to do this

he changed to database session helpful forum answer link

To generate pdfs:

• Ryan?s Bates solutions, episode 79 (this works well, but is a little difficult to learn how to code in)
• http://rubyreports.org/ This looks promising for the future, but not much conversation going on about it.
• HTMLDoc This looks really GREAT. I?m used to html so the new level of coding to learn is much less. awesomeness. There is also this video tutorial.
• the list - this is a list of pretty much every pdf generator available and being used with rails
• expensive but awesome prince

To style dates in rails use strftime function.

For example: <%= comment.created_at.strftime(?%Y?) %>

Though, this might technically be ruby code not rails.

UPDATE: Here is updated code

Definitely, use fastercsv

The best way to explain this is with code. Here it is. Copy and paste. Copy and paste.

Ryan Bates is the man and so is Rick Olson who created the plugin. Actually Mr. Olson is even more the man.

UPDATE: I made some code changes that seemed to work better for my needs. Plus, it places everything in the respond_to .csv block. Check the pastie

Recipe 35 of rails recipes does not seem to work any longer on rails 2.0. I believe you have to now strictly use FasterCSV - which is supposed to be much better anyhow.

fastercsv docs

fastercsv project page

Here is a great tutorial on how to get it working

to install fastercsv, you must install the gem. Do the command: sudo gem install fastercsv

Here is how to do it:

Date range to SQL clause

(6.months.ago.to_date..1.year.ago.to_date).to_s(:db) => ?BETWEEN ?2005-07-27? AND ?2005-01-22??

taken from here

The following are some good resource for how to use Gruff graphs:

• gruff docs
• dynamic graphs tutorial complete with how to do keys

The last one was HUGELY helpful:

def stats g = Gruff::Line.new(?580x210?) g.theme = { :colors => [?#ff6600?, ?#3bb000?, ?#1e90ff?, ?#efba00?, ?#0aaafd?], :marker_color => ?#aaa?, :background_colors => [?#eaeaea?, ?#fff?] }

g.hide_title = true
g.font = File.expand_path('path/to/font.ttf', RAILS_ROOT)

range = "created_at #{(12.months.ago.to_date..Date.today).to_s(:db)}"
@users = User.count(:all, :conditions => range, :group => "DATE_FORMAT(created_at, '%Y-%m')", :order =>"created_at ASC")
@votes = Vote.count(:all, :conditions => range, :group => "DATE_FORMAT(created_at, '%Y-%m')", :order =>"created_at ASC")
@bookmarks = Bookmark.count(:all, :conditions => range, :group => "DATE_FORMAT(created_at, '%Y-%m')", :order =>"created_at ASC")

# Take the union of all keys & convert into a hash {1 => "month", 2 => "month2"...}
# - This will be the x-axis.. representing the date range
months = (@users.keys | @votes.keys | @bookmarks.keys).sort
keys = Hash[*months.collect {|v| [months.index(v),v.to_s] }.flatten]

# Plot the data - insert 0's for missing keys
g.data("Users", keys.collect {|k,v| @users[v].nil? ? 0 : @users[v]})
g.data("Votes", keys.collect {|k,v| @votes[v].nil? ? 0 : @votes[v]})
g.data("Bookmarks", keys.collect {|k,v| @bookmarks[v].nil? ? 0 : @bookmarks[v]})

g.labels = keys

send_data(g.to_blob, :disposition => 'inline', :type => 'image/png', :filename => "site-stats.png")

end

Here is how to sort by date thanks to Ryan Bates

Also see episode 70