Output format framework

[cjcodeproj]

For the tools that generate output reports, most of the processing is based on loading and sorting the data. The output part is easy, and most of that code is in other modules.

Consider an API framework that abstracted the output even further; so a tool like media.tools.movies.list could handle multiple output formats with very little change to the code base.

[cjcodeproj]

Additional Notes

• Code needs to handle output for
  • Start of page formatting
  • Headers
  • Header separators
  • Output batches (with batch headers)
  • Footers
  • Stats notes
  • End of page formatting
• In this nomenclature, a page is most likely a file
  • But there could be a mechanism to handle page formatting
  • Such as ensuring headers are at the top of multiple pages.
• Output should be to a variable that can be dumped to a file, or printed to STDOUT.

[cjcodeproj]

More Notes

Code should work something like this.

formatter = FormatterClass.new(Style.TEXT)
formatter.format(Output.LIST)
output = formatter.headers()
output += formatter.format_batch(in_batch)
output += formatter.close()
print(output)

There could be other methods, but the idea is the code could output either plain text or HTML without any code change at the application level. The code should also automatically change it's behavior based on the type of content that is being output.