Get XML from dRofus and Assign Data Source
When starting to create a report in XF Designer, the first thing you have to do is assign a data source. The data source is an XML file with data from dRofus. You can either use one of the sample XML files in the sample pack or generate one from dRofus. If you are making a report for a specific project it will be beneficial to generate it from dRofus since the data in the XML file may be specific to this project. Find the report under Reports and exports in dRofus that is similar or contain the data you want to use in the new report. Make the data selection and options you want. Go to More options → Format and set it to XML:
Note that some of the options will limit what data to get (e.g. what room) and some will also define what XML to export for each room. E.g. the images will not be part of the XML unless the "With pictures" option is checked. Also note that not all the xml attributes will be included unless there exists data about it for the current item. E.g. if you have an extra room core field in your project that attribute will only be included for the rooms that actually have any value for it. Therefore it is recommended that you limit your xml to only a part of the database when you are designing the report and that this has all the data that you want to have in the report. We recommend that at least two items such as rooms should be included in your data to get a correct preview.
Save the file and in XF Designer choose Home → Assign Data Source and browse to the XML file under Data Source. The XML data will be shown in the Data Source pane (3) (default to the right) as in the image below. Now you can begin creating the report by dragging and dropping the data from the Data Source (3) to the document/page (1).
Important to Google Chrome users: Because of a bug in chrome version 15 and below, you need to either remove the drofus.xml file from the downloads folder between each time you run this report, or you can go to options () → Under the Bonnet → Downloads and make sure that "Ask where to save each file before downloading" is checked. You don’t need this in version 16 (currently beta).
