Add Report Export Functionality

[Epig-is-a-llama]

I will preface this with the fact that I have never contributed to an open source repo before nor do I have any experience with GUI applications. I apologise if any of my code/commit names/commenting is against convention.

Quick Summary:
Adds 2 new buttons to export all data from inspector to either a .md or .html (depending on button clicked), clicking either button will open a save file dialogue.

Details of modifications:

• Into each update_x_page function I have added the following:

  • 1 optional boolean argument which is set to False by default, specifically called export_data.
  • Lines after any data is added to the window which then takes that same data, formats it into markdown and then adds it to the markdown_data local variable.
  • 2 lines at the end consisting of a check if the bool option is true, if it is true the function will return the markdown string.

• Furthermore several string literals which were parsed into the window have been moved to variables, this is so the report builder can simply reference those variables rather than having its own set of string literals. This has a very minor ram utilisation penalty for the benefit of preventing situations where the string literal pairs are not updated together and only one gets updated (or translated).

• I have added an additional function which when called manages the gathering of all of these datapoints and their formatting, it then returns the MD string in a tuple together with a HTML string (converted by the markdown module).

• To control this function I have added 2 new buttons Export .md & Export .html, these both call the aforementioned report builder function and then call the file saving system which opens a file saving dialogue and saves the report in their respective file types.

• As a side effect of these buttons I found the default window size slightly too small and so increased the default size, if this is an issue the easiest solution would be to switch the buttons from displaying text to displaying sprites.

Currently everything is working as intended, I have however marked this as a draft because of some formatting issues with the html (and to a far lesser extent the md) which I still want to address.

As a nice bonus this also closes #31 and could perhaps be classified as closing #33 too (if desired I would be more than happy to also create a .pdf export option, the current code would not need very much modification (perhaps using https://pypi.org/project/markdown-pdf/)).

[Nokse22]

Hi @Epig-is-a-llama I am very happy to see somebody working on this and am honored this is your first contribution! 😄

I have tested it and I have noticed the following things:

• Error when saving, I guess you forgot a global report in file_save_response

  File "/app/share/inspector/command_test/window.py", line 114, in file_save_response
    report_bytes = GLib.Bytes.new(report.encode("utf-8"))
                                  ^^^^^^
UnboundLocalError: cannot access local variable 'report' where it is not associated with a value

• The buttons in the headerbar take too much space, I would instead add them to the hamburger menu if you can
• I would try to use less lists for key-value pairs and just do - **Key:** Value
  Instead of:

# Processor/CPU Information:

## CPU
`Command: lscpu`

**Architecture:**

* X86_64

**CPU op-mode(s):**

* 32-bit, 64-bit

**Address sizes:**

* 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

**Byte Order:**

* Little Endian

Do this:

# Processor/CPU Information:

## CPU
`Command: lscpu`

- **Architecture:** X86_64
- **CPU op-mode(s):** 32-bit, 64-bit
- **Address sizes:** 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
- **Byte Order:** Little Endian

• Feel free to add yourself in the developers section in main.py on_about_action

If you want to also add export to pdf I would really appreciate. Since markdown-pdf already uses markdown-it-py to convert markdown to html and PyMuPDF to convert html to pdf I would try to use markdown-it-py to do the markdown to html transformation. What do you think?

Let me know if you need any help!!

[Epig-is-a-llama]

Sounds good, the global never broke when testing last night but appears to be throwing errors now, should be an easy fix.

I was worried about the buttons taking too much room on the top as well but was just trying to get a functional prototype done last night. What about either an Export button perhaps even with just a new document sprite rather than text to minimise size which then opens a drop down menu for the export type options?

The formatting on the reports is indeed currently very janky, my initial plan was to try and keep it as close to the original programme interface as possible. Your proposed format however both works and looks vastly superior and will also help solve part of the HTML formatting issues. I will implement that now.

I will implement the MD to PDF as well, I will also try out markdown-it-py's MD to HTML conversion to verify if it works the same (or better) than the existing conversion.

Also thanks for inviting me to add myself to the developer's list, I will do that too!

[Epig-is-a-llama]

Ok I have done as much as possible right now, the current issues blocking further progress are:

• Confirmation on my earlier suggestion of a drop down menu specifically to contain all 3 export options to prevent header cluttering, the button for said menu being either just Export, Export to File or a new file sprite.

• Currently unable to get meson to install markdown-it, markdown-pdf or xhtml2pdf with any success, is there some obvious manual config file to add packages to be installed on build that I'm missing?

• Some general pointers on what extra styling (if any) I should aim for on the HTML?

• There are some un-used vars which I have identified (ln 314, 327 & 434), if they are indeed unused and not part of some planned future change should I remove them?

[Nokse22]

• Confirmation on my earlier suggestion of a drop down menu specifically to contain all 3 export options to prevent header cluttering, the button for said menu being either just Export, Export to File or a new file sprite.

A menu button with a document symbolic is good

• Currently unable to get meson to install markdown-it, markdown-pdf or xhtml2pdf with any success, is there some obvious manual config file to add packages to be installed on build that I'm missing?

The app uses flatpak so it needs to build the packages in the manifest

python3-markdown-it-py.json

Here is the one for markdown-it-py, you need to add it and in io.github.nokse22.inspector.json add:

    "modules" : [
    	"python3-markdown-it-py.json",
    	{

I had some issues trying to build the other two, but I was able to build weasyprint if you want to try it
python3-weasyprint.json

• Some general pointers on what extra styling (if any) I should aim for on the HTML?

Lets see how it comes out using the library.

• There are some un-used vars which I have identified (ln 314, 327 & 434), if they are indeed unused and not part of some planned future change should I remove them?

You can remove them

For the markdown I would try to have a list with dashes and a tab before sublist items like this:

- **BIOS Date:** 11/05/2024
- **BIOS Release:** 1.51
- **BIOS Vendor:** LENOVO
- **Power:**
	* Control - auto
	* Runtime Active Time - 0
	* Runtime Status - unsupported
	* Runtime Suspended Time - 0

otherwise when rendered in markdown there is no newline, all information is on the same line

[Epig-is-a-llama]

The current version addresses all concerns found in your previous comment, thank you so much for the help getting it to build the extra modules in. With everything including PDF export working this not only closes #31 but now will also close #33!

The two remaining issues I have identified are:

• I am hitherto unable to find where the values for the keyboard shortcuts window get stored?
• Should we add behaviour for when export is done it opens either the save location folder or the file itself automatically or do we want to add a notification which when clicked opens either the file/folder?

[Nokse22]

Nice!

• I am hitherto unable to find where the values for the keyboard shortcuts window get stored?

The keyboard shortcuts window is in inspector/data/gtk/help-overlay.ui

• Should we add behaviour for when export is done it opens either the save location folder or the file itself automatically or do we want to add a notification which when clicked opens either the file/folder?

I would prefer to add a ToastOverlay with a message like Report successfully saved and a button to open the the file.

[Epig-is-a-llama]

Adding the keyboard shortcuts was easy, I was however completely unable to get any toasts to show at all after hours of trying. I wasn't getting any errors or anything the code ran and then the code below continued to run but nothing ever showed up? If you could help setup the toast itself so it shows at the end of file_save_response I should be able to map the action and add the button. And then we will be all done.

[Epig-is-a-llama]

Hold on, looking at it I'm getting permission errors from trying to get files to open on my test function, are you sure this is possible from a permissions standpoint?

[Nokse22]

If you want I can merge this and add it myself no problem.

[Epig-is-a-llama]

If you want I can merge this and add it myself no problem.

Yea that works, thanks for all the help with getting it working, good luck with the toast and releasing etc!