[ic] Excel/PDF files on-the-fly

[Rene Hertell]

> Yes! A cron-job is calling a perl file, which check the timestamp
> beetween the current "products.txt" or so and the created xls files. If
> the different is true by the condition of programmed value in my perl
> script, it will create a new files.

This would not help me in all cases. I'm needing this feature for content
that the user will be selecting after his needs..


> > <-- end of file.csv.html --->
> >
> > I was hoping that I could create a the xls and PDF files in a
> similar style
> > as above..
>
> I don't understand your question right! I've difficult to follow you.

What I was trying to explain is that for special items like the Micro$oft
Vcard
(http://icdevgroup.org/pipermail/interchange-users/2001-October/013656.html)
, csv files etc. I'm building the content directly on one page.  I just fool
the browser by changing the http-header so that it thinks that it is getting
a "real" object.

> But, your codes use any resource alyways by every request. All request
> of your visitors is wasting your resource of your server *by every
> request*. Did you understand, what I mean?
> Once more .... every request of some pages, which make some results of
> some kind of output as a htmlfile, xyz-files, uvw-files, pdf-files,
> exel-file, etc. have not to be created *on the fly*, if the information
> is coming from the products database ifselft, which is not changing all
> the times.

Yes, I know. The server has resources enough, and the site has not so much
traffic that these processes would take too much of the capacity. The
content is mainly from a database with calendar content, that is updated
quite often. As you suggested before with comparing the timestamp, it wont
work in my case. I have built a custom admin-interface with M$ Access that
is connected with odbc to a postgres server, so when changes are  made to
the content, it won't do the export to the *.txt files.

> Did you understand what I mean? Sorry! I'm an old german boy
> with a weakness, to us the english language right.

Yes I understand you really well. Actually my mother tongue is German. I
just can't write German without inventing my own grammar and spelling rules
:)


> > I have to try to find out if the Spreadsheet::WriteExcel module
> can do these
> > things :)
>
> It is very simple to use! Try it! :-)

I'll try to figure it out. It can however take some time because Perl is not
my native language :)


Thanks really much for your ideas and help. By the way, the
http://easysw.com/htmldoc/ software seemed to be really cool. I have to
check it out some more, and try to make something out of it :)


Rene