Set Page Margins in a PDF Report

This example shows how to define page margins in a PDF report. You can define top, bottom, left, right margins for a PDF page, plus its header, footer and gutter sizes.

Create Report

Import the DOM API namespace so you do not have to use long, fully-qualified class names.

import mlreportgen.dom.*;

Create and open a report.

d = Document('myreport', 'pdf');
open(d);

Create PDF Page Header

Get the current page layout object.

currentLayout = d.CurrentPageLayout;

Create a page header definition for the PDF document.

pdfheader = PDFPageHeader();

Create a DOM Paragraph object and make it center aligned and bold. Set its font size to 12pt. Append it to the PDFPageHeader object.

p = Paragraph('Sample Traffic Data in Austin');
p.Style = [p.Style, {HAlign('center'), Bold(true), FontSize('12pt')}];
append(pdfheader, p);

Assign the created pdfheader object to the PageHeaders of the current page layout.

currentLayout.PageHeaders = pdfheader;

Create Body Content

Create cell arrays for the styles to be used by the formal table and its table entries.

dataTableStyle = {Border('solid'), ColSep('solid'), RowSep('solid'), Width('100%')...
    OuterMargin('0pt', '0pt', '0pt', '0pt')};

Create some sample data from the Austin traffic camera to include in the table. Then create a FormalTable object and include the sample data in the Header and Body sections.

dataHeader = {'Camera ID', 'Status', 'Manufacturer', 'Signal Engineer Area'};
dataBody = {'1', 'TURNED_ON', 'Spectra', 'NORTHEAST';
    '2', 'TURNED_ON', 'Sarix', 'NORTHWEST';
    '3', 'TURNED_OFF', 'Spectura', 'SOUTHWEST';
    '3', 'TURNED_ON', 'Spectura', 'NORTHEAST';
    '4', 'TURNED_ON', 'Sarix', 'SOUTHEAST';
    '5', 'TURNED_ON', 'Spectra', 'NORTHEAST';
    '6', 'TURNED_ON', 'Sarix', 'NORTHWEST';
    '7', 'TURNED_OFF', 'Spectura', 'SOUTHWEST';
    '8', 'TURNED_ON', 'Spectura', 'NORTHEAST';
    '9', 'TURNED_ON', 'Sarix', 'SOUTHEAST'};
dataTable = FormalTable(dataHeader, dataBody);
dataTable.Header.Style = [dataTable.Header.Style {Bold}];
dataTable.Style = [dataTable.Style dataTableStyle];
append(d, dataTable);

Set Top Margin and Header Size

PDF page headers and footers are fixed in size. The total height from top of the page to the body content is the value of the Top property of the PageMargins object plus the value of the Header property.

Set the Top margin property to 0.75 inches. To accommodate the 12 pts Paragraph created in the PDF Header, set the header size to 0.25 inches. 1 inch equals 72 pts, so 0.25 inches equal 18 pts. The Paragraph content occupies only 12 pts, so 0.25 inches is enough to accommodate the header. The body content starts 1 inch from the top of the page with the header height of 0.25 inches.

currentLayout.PageMargins.Top = '0.75in';
currentLayout.PageMargins.Header = '0.25in';

Create PDF Page Footer

Create a page footer definition for the PDF document.

pdffooter = PDFPageFooter();

Append a horizontal rule to the pdffooter object.

append(pdffooter, HorizontalRule());

Append an image to the pdffooter object. Use the DOM ScaleToFit format to scale the image to fit in the page. Assign the created pdffooter object to the PageFooters of the current page layout.

imgStyle = {ScaleToFit(true), HAlign('right'), Height('0.30in')};
img = Image('Logo.Png');
img.Style = imgStyle;
append(pdffooter, img);
currentLayout.PageFooters = pdffooter;

Set Bottom Margin and Footer Size

The distance from the bottom of the page to the body content is the value of Bottom property of the PageMargins object plus the value of the Footer property.

Set the Bottom property value to 0.5 inches. To accommodate the 0.30 inches height of the Image and the horizontal rule in the footer, set the Footer property value to 0.5 inches. This makes the distance from the bottom of the page to the body content 1 inch.

currentLayout.PageMargins.Bottom = '0.5in';
currentLayout.PageMargins.Footer = '0.5in';

Set Left Margin, Right Margin and Gutter Size

This example uses the Gutter setting to leave room on the left side of the page for binding the report. The Gutter size is set to 0.25 inches and Left margin is set to 0.5 inches. So, the content starts from 0.75 inches (left margin + gutter) from the left side of the page. The Right margin is set to 0.5 inches.

currentLayout.PageMargins.Gutter = '0.25in';
currentLayout.PageMargins.Left = '0.5in';
currentLayout.PageMargins.Right = '0.5in';

Generate and display the report.

close(d);
rptview(d.OutputPath);