The information below details various drupal administration tasks related to forena, which are typically located within forena structure and forena configuration (containing various tabs).
If you are aware of additional related items that you'd recommend to also include here, or you noticed anything already here that's incomplete or contains errors, please report about it in the forena issue queue. Better still: contribute an updated version of this help document by attaching it to the issue.
The process to upgrade module forena is similar to upgrading any other Drupal module. However, after the standard upgrade activities are completed (e.g. including the database updates, if needed), there might be some additional drupal administration tasks required related to forena. Failing (forgetting) to do so may lead to situations where special warnings, errors, etc start to happen.
Here is a (partial) list of scenarios that do require some extra drupal administration related to forena:
| Scenario | Situation and required drupal admin action |
|---|---|
| Upgrading to forena version 7.x-3.x (from a pre-7.x-3.x version, such as 7.x-2.x). |
When you try to edit the format of any report, e.g. a sample report),
you get a warning message like: Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in forena_format_form() (line 264 of .../modules/forena/forena.admin.inc). This warning appears because the value for skin (in the same edit format window) is empty (blank). What is worse: you can't select any skin from the drop-down list because it is entirely empty. Continue reading the next item in this list to address this issue, after that issue is resolved come back to this item, pretty sure the drop-down list for the report you selected won't be empty anymore (and the warning won't show up anymore either). |
| Upgrading to forena version 7.x-3.x (from a pre-7.x-3.x version, such as 7.x-2.x). |
Using Drupal's administration option Configuration
produces a warning message like: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in form_select_options() (line 2675 of .../includes/form.inc). This warning appears because the value for Default report skin on the forena configuration screen (on the general tab) is empty (blank). What is worse: you can't select any Default report skin from the drop-down list there because it is entirely empty (also ...). To resolve this (so that the drop-down list is no longer empty), 2 actions are needed (in the order specified):
|
Forena takes advantage of caching techniques, similar to caching that's available also for things like themes, menus, etc. This implies that there are some situations where you'll have to clear the forena cache also, using the clear cache button on the forena structure screen. Failing (forgetting) to do so will typically lead to situations where you changed 'something', but it doesn't seem to work (potentially because it isn't activated yet). Also, in case something doesn't seem to work (yet) after you changed something, it doesn't hurt to clear the forena cache (it may start working after you did just that ...).
Here is a (partial) list of scenarios that do require to clear the forena cache:
| Scenario | Situation while the forena cache is not cleared |
|---|---|
| Copying new reports into a newly created subfolder of the Report Repository | Those new reports will not yet show up within My Reports |
| Adding a new skin (.skinfo file) in the Report Repository (e.g. by cloning it from the default_skin.skinfo) | Such new skin will not yet show up in the pull-down list for setting it as the Default report skin on the forena configuration screen (on the general tab) |
| Changing the name of a skin (within the .skinfo file), e.g. because you forgot to do so after creating the .skinfo file by cloning it from an existing .skinfo file. | The new name of the skin will not yet show up in the pull-down list for setting it as the Default report skin on the forena configuration screen (on the general tab), instead the old skin name (before changing the name in the .skinfo file) will still show up (e.g. with the same name as in the .skinfo file where you cloned it from) |
Make sure the text format within input formats is set to full HTML within the forena configuration screen (on the general tab). Especially if you're planning to use SVG graphs it is important to avoid that tags are being stripped out, as this could cause such graphs to not be shown at all (or with some error messages).
As a variation, first define some new text format (e.g.: Reporting HTML) and then set the text format to this new text format. The advantage of using some new text format is that the impact of tuning the selected filter (as detailed below) will be limited to forena reports only.
Navigate to the configuration page related to text formats (within content authoring) and select the text format you specified on the forena configuration screen. Make sure these entries are turned of for the selected text format (within enabled filters):
Assuming you completed the setup of your SVG graph library, you should now be in good shape to start using forena's amazing charting features. To perform an easy validation about this, just checkout one of the SVG samples delivered with forena. Use the external SVG graph sample in case you're using an older browser that does not support inline SVG. Alternatively, if you're using a more recent browser, try using the Master Summary with drill down.
If you don't see a nicely formatted graph, but only some square with a grey background (about the size of the SVG graph you should see if it would have worked), or you're getting some error messages, you may want to checkout the issue queue on Drupal.org (search for html filter), such as in issue https://drupal.org/node/828458.
For more info about this topic, checkout Basic Reporting on External Data - Quick introduction to reporting using the Northwind sample database. (i.e. what is explained from about 00:30 to 02:10).