Instantly generate branded Word and Excel reports from your wpDataTables data, built by TMS Outsource.
Custom development, customer support, ongoing feature releases
PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, WordPress
TMS Outsource (original product, add-on to wpDataTables)
Report Builder is a TMS Outsource original product and a direct extension of wpDataTables. The add-on arose from observed demand within the wpDataTables customer base and was developed without a separate client brief. TMS maintains both products simultaneously, with active updates since 2016.
While we worked on wpDataTables, we identified that many of our customers wanted to use the filterable and sortable tables to prepare a printable or downloadable report, and most of them wanted the generated document to be branded with logos, fonts, and colors used in their organization.
We developed Report Builder as an add-on to the wpDataTables plugin. It enables users to generate Word (DOCX) and Excel (XLSX) documents directly from within the WordPress environment, using actual data from their tables.
From 2016 launch to 10 years of continuous maintenance.
Report Builder was developed in 2016. Version 1.0 took about 3 months of active development and 1 week of testing.
In 2017 we re-built the admin panel GUI and the API completely, to be compatible with wpDataTables 2.0 and to follow the same design guidelines.
Report Builder has been under continuous maintenance and development since its 2016 launch. Active support is provided through the TMS Plugins support portal, with regular feature updates and compatibility releases for new WordPress versions.
Server-side DOCX and XLSX generation in pure PHP within WordPress constraints.
Similar to wpDataTables itself, the choice of tools we could use to build the plugin was limited to PHP and the most popular libraries. Word and Excel file formats are actually ZIP archives containing XML (OOXML). Building these from scratch in PHP, without access to COM objects or server-side Office installations, requires careful manipulation of the OOXML format. The Excel and Word built-in file generators use pure PHP and integrate with the front-end part built on wpDataTables.
The plugin must pull live data from whatever source wpDataTables is connected to (MySQL, Google Sheets, Excel, CSV, JSON, XML) and inject it into a template at generation time. This means the report engine needs to handle arbitrary table structures, data types, and filter states without knowing the schema in advance.
Users define report templates with placeholder tokens for logos, fonts, colors, and data fields. The engine must resolve these tokens against arbitrary table structures and data types, producing a correctly formatted document every time. Supporting custom branding while keeping the template editor usable for non-technical WordPress users is an ongoing UX challenge.
Generating large DOCX or XLSX files for tables with thousands of rows must not exceed PHP memory limits on shared hosting. Since many WordPress users are on low-resource servers with no ability to use caching tools like Redis, the report generation engine must be optimized to stream and chunk data efficiently within tight execution constraints.
10 years of continuous development and a global customer base.
Customers globally using Report Builder for invoices, statistical reports, and more
Average rating on CodeCanyon out of 5
Of continuous maintenance and feature updates since the 2016 launch
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