Project File

A project file is an XML file which stores all settings of a particular project. You should save a project file for each site you generate and back it up. You will NOT be able to create a project file backwardly from the generated scripts later.

A project file is an XML file, like other XML document, it is human-legible. You should be able to open a project file in any text editor and view the content. Each object (e.g. database, table, field, etc) is represented by an XML node in the project file. The object properties are saved as attributes of the node.

From PHP Report Maker 4 project file is in utf-8 encoding, your text editor needs to support utf-8. Most text editors support utf-8 nowadays. You can simply use Notepad if you do not have other text editors. With basic understanding of XML, you can change the settings manually. However, If you modify a project file, make sure your keep it well-formed. To check if the file is well-formed, you can change the file extension to .xml and open it with Internet Explorer or Firefox. If the file can be loaded and displayed properly in the browser, it is well-formed.

Auto Backup

PHP Report Maker supports auto-backup. When you save a project, the old version will be saved to the subfolder "<product name>\Backup" under the My Documents folder first, you can recover older versions of your project from the backup folder in case of corrupted projects or other accidental losses. Note that only the latest 10 versions will be kept, older versions will be deleted.

Note: The Documents folder is your personal folder in which you can store your personal files. For example, in Windows XP, the actual location of the Documents folder is C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents by default, where C is the drive in which Windows is installed, and <user name> is the currently logged-on user. In Windows Vista (or later), the folder is C:\Users\<user Name>\Documents.

Project Name

Each project file has a project name. By default the file name (without extension) of the project file is used as project name. Before you name your project file when saving it for the first time, a temporary name, Project<n>, where n is a number, is used. The project name is an important property, it is used in the generated codes to identify your project.

Note: It is recommended that only alphanumerical characters is used in project name.

When you want to create a new project based on an existing project, you can use [Save As...] under the [Project] menu. If [Save As...] is used, the project name is changed to same as the new project file name.

Alternatively, you can also explicitly change the project name by the following steps:

1. Click [Tools] -> [Compatibility Properties] in the main menu bar,
2. Change the project name,
3. Click [OK] button

If you want to create a backup copy or another version of an existing project, use [Save a Copy...] to save the file with another name. If [Save a Copy...] is used, the project name is not changed, so the project name is not same as the file name anymore. However, with the same project name, scripts generated from these different project files will still work with each other like they are generated from the same project file.

If you use IIS (Internet Information Services), our products can create virtual directory for your project. The project name is used as virtual directory alias as well as the path under the default Web site of IIS. Therefore, if you want to create a virtual directory with a specific name, you can change the project name using [Save As...] or using the [Compatibility Properties] form first.

How to Check the Project Name of a Project File

There are 2 ways to check the project name:

1. Open your project file with the product, see the caption, the project name is shown as <Product Name> - <Project Name>, for example, if the caption is "PHP Report Maker - demo", the project name is "demo".
   
   
2. Open the project file with a text editor (e.g. Notepad), the project name can be found in the <project> tag, check the "ProjName" attribute, for example, if the <project> tag reads <Project Version="x.x.x.x." ProjName="demo" ...(omitted).../>, the project name of the project is "demo".

Also See:

Template Object Properties
Compatibility Properties Setup