print line before page changed in vfp reports

Question

I'm creating a report in vfp. The report contains grouping. In the end of each group, i draw a line. Each row in the detail band doesn't contain any line, only at the end of each group. The problem is when the group expand to the next page, in the previous page i want to draw a line at the bottom. Like this :

(page 1)

group A

name, etc

x1,etc

x2,etc

???how do I add line here?

(page 2)

group A

name,etc

x3,etc

x4,etc

---

group B

name,etc

y1,etc

y2,etc

---

I've tried to place the line in the page footer band, but the last line of the report doesn't have exact position, so it doesn't look nice. Hope I described the situation clear enough. Thank You for taking the time to help me.

Answer 1

Without some significant smoke-and-mirrors trickery: running the report twice, once hidden and track where the breaks are via function calls in the report, and then again for production, its not EASILY done.

The only thing I could suggest is putting a line at the TOP of a PAGE FOOTER which prints on EVERY page. How long have you been working with VFP. Depending, I MIGHT be able to guide you through it.

Ok, here are the steps I would take. This is under the assumption that you are pre-querying the results for your report and ordering them by some means into a temporary report cursor. You need to add 2 columns to your query as place-holders and be sure your do your cursor as " INTO CURSOR READWRITE " as we will be writing to this from within the report... that is the trick.

Next, modify your report. Go to the detail band and put a single line at the bottom of it. Adjust as needed if you need a few pixels under the last detail element. Double click the line and get to the tab where it allows you to put in a "Print When" condition for the line. Enter one of the new column names called "ShowLine" (but without the quotes).

Now, the "hook" for smoke and mirrors. Create another textbox field output in the report detail. It can be as small as 2 pixels wide and never actually prints anything. It can be put at the beginning or end of the report detail, no matter, just as long as its in the detail band. Double click it to bring up what it will print. In the expression, enter the following... WhatPageAmIOn( _PageNo ) This will actually call a function we'll add to your program which writes back to your report cursor... I'll hit that next.

Now, the code. The following is a sample snippet of code I've written to query the data for the report, have the extra columns, and put into a READWRITE cursor. From that, I run the report but to NOCONSOLE so it doesn't actually visually do anything, just runs in the background. It then cycles through and looks for the break between each page and goes backward 1 record from the break and stamps that record as "ShowLine" = .T... Then run the report again as normal and you have your one line appearing in the detail band regardless of a data group, but always the last data line at the end of each page.

Here's the code

*/ Query your data, order by whatever, */ but tack on the two extra fields and make it READWRITE

select;
      YourData,;
      AnotherField,;
      MoreData,;
      .f. as ShowLine,;
      00000 as WhatPage;
   FROM ;
      YourData;
   ORDER BY ;
      WhateverForYourReport
   INTO ;
      CURSOR C_RptData READWRITE

*/ Pre-run the report NOCONSOLE so your windows don't get messed up / scrolled      
REPORT FORM YourReport NOCONSOLE 

*/ now, go back to the cursor that your report ran with 
SELECT C_RptData
*/ set a variable for the first page you are looking to find a break for.
*/ in this case, the first detail that APPEARED on page 2.
lnLastPage = 2

*/ Start at top of the report cursor file and keep going until we reach
*/ the end of file where the LOCATE can no longer find "Pages".
GO TOP
DO WHILE NOT EOF()
   */ find the first record on ex: Page 2
   LOCATE FOR WhatPage = lnLastPage
   */ Did we find one?
   IF FOUND()
      */ Yes, go backwards 1 record
      SKIP -1
      */ This is the last detail that appeared on the page before it (ie: pg 1)
      */ Mark this line as ok to "ShowLine" the next time the report is run.
      replace ShowLine WITH .T.
      */ Now, advance the page counter to look for the NEXT page break...
      */ ex: between page 2&3,  3&4,  4&5,   etc...
      lnLastPage = lnLastPage +1
   ENDIF 
ENDDO

*/ Run your final version of the report
REPORT FORM YourReport Preview  (or print)

RETURN

Here's the only hook below to track/update the page associated with the detail. I don't know if you have a main "SET PROCEDURE TO" file, or just a bunch of free .PRG files all in your project, or even if your reporting is done from within a PRG file itself. however, all you need is this function to be included in any of those locations. For simplest test, I would just create it as a stand-alone .prg file (if you are NOT using SET PROCEDURE, or doing your report within a PRG file and not from within a class method/event).

FUNCTION WhatPageAmIOn
LPARAMETERS lnPage
    replace whatPage WITH lnPage
RETURN ""

As in the original description, the report is going to include a field in the detail band based on a function "WhatPageamIOn" and passes the parameter of _PageNo which is the internal VFP variable that keeps track of the current report page that is typically used in report header / footers. So, as each detail is getting processed, we are "STAMPING" the detail data with whatever the page is. We return an empty string "" so nothing actually gets printed, yet we've hooked what we needed. From this, the loop finding the first record at the beginning of every page (starting at page 2), and skipping backwards to the last entry for the prior page and we're done.

Good luck.