Getting started

Dependencies

forena does not have any dependencies. However it comes with quite a few integrations with other modules, e.g. to use it as a Views style (which requires the Views module of course). Integration with the BEAN module is another example. In order to generate images, however, it does require Drupal to have a supported graphing library such as SVGGraph (which is used in your sites Forena module Demo documentation).

These integrations are implemented without creating a module dependency in Forena. If a module that Forena integrates with is installed and enabled, then the integration can be used. More information about available integrations is included in the Site Building guide that comes with Forena and is located in reports/help.sitebuilding.

Installation and configuration

After following normal practices for installing a Drupal module there are a few steps that must be performed prior to using forena. For more details about these steps, refer to what is below (depending on the version of forena being used).

7.x-4.x version

The required steps are fully documented in the setup guide that comes with forena as of version 7.x-4.x. To access this guide, navigate to reports/help.setup#installation in your website. As an alternative, use the Reporting Tutorials in your navigation menu, then select the Setup guide and finally the Installation and Configuration link in it.

7.x-3.x version

Forena version 7.x-3.x comes with some information about installation and configuration, such as the required text formats tuning. To access it, navigate to reports/help.drupaladmin in your website. As an alternative, use the My Reports in your navigation menu, then select the Forena Site Administrators Guide within category help.

Since most of the administration of this version is similar to the 7.x-4.x version, it may be worth considering installing that version also, e.g. in a local development environment. After doing so use the setup guide contained in that version for more detailed instructions. Keep in mind however that there are some major changes between those 2 versions, such as the caching mechanism, or the security architecture (permissions).

Yet another resource for more details about this topic are the various Video demos and tutorials specific to this release of forena.

7.x-2.x version

Probably the best resource for more details about this topic are the various Video demos and tutorials specific to this release of forena.

Another approach for getting more details regarding installation and configuration is to use the setup guide as contained in 7.x-4.x, similar to what is described above for the 7.x-3.x version.

Since the 7.x-2.x release of forena is fairly similar to the 6.x-2.2 version, it might be worth reviewing the issues related to the 6.x-2.2 version below, they might apply to this version also. Where appropriate, feel free to enhance this community docu.

6.x-2.2 version

Probably the best resource for more details about this topic are the various Video demos and tutorials specific to the 7.x-2.x release of forena, which is fairly similar to the 6.x-2.2 version.

Here are some additional issues (and recommended solutions) that might show up when trying to get started with this early (though still supported) version of forena:

1. Issue: After download and enable of the 6.2.2 version of forena, and without visiting any forena related admin page, forena already shows a "My reports link" in the navigation menu, pointing to a path like .../forena. It does show this link to logged in users such as user/1, but no such links are shown to anonymous users (which seems OK since nothing was done so far regarding forena permissions). Likewise, there are also links like "Create report" (path = .../reports/add) and "Forena reports" (path = .../admin/settings/forena). However, by following the "My reports" link, the list of reports shown is empty, and No Reports Found is displayed.
   
   Required action: Use the "Forena Reports" link in the navigation menu, pointing to a path like .../admin/settings/forena. The path used as "report repository" will probably be xyz/repos/reports, whereas xyz=the folder name where the forena module is installed. Even though that is probably not the directory "... you want to use for your reports ..." (as it states below that field), do not change anything to it (yet), and just hit the save configuration button. Doing so should produce an informational message like "The configuration options have been saved.". Then revisit the "My Reports" link, which should now show a list of the sample reports delivered with forena (and no longer the "No Reports Found"). Attention: more configuration steps are needed to use some of forena's features, but this seems to be all that's needed to at least access the delivered samples.
2. Issue: #2058363: Required D6 administration steps contains some details about an issue related to Page Not Found.
   
   Required action: Comment #2 in that issue seems to solve it.

Note: Use #2058363: Required D6 administration steps to report about other issue to be documented here.

External libraries

Forena takes advantage of facilities provided via some external libraries, such as:

• The charts and graphs that Forena generates require the PHP SVG Graph library, its installation path is sites/all/libraries/SvgGraph.
• Reports created by Forena in the format of HTML tables can be enhanced by using the dataTables plugin (jQuery), with features such as presenting paged tables or filtering of rows, its installation path is sites/all/libraries/dataTables.
• PDF documents can be generated using the MPDF library, its installation path is sites/all/libraries/mpdf

More details about using these libraries can be found in the Setup guide.