Nectar 0.21 Plugin Feature Request

[ikorzha758]

Nectar 0.21 Plugin Feature Request:
I have deployed the Nectar 0.21 on my Cacti server and shortly after have received a feedback from end users of the reporting feature.
Basically what end users are interested in is reports archiving on the Cacti server itself with ability to view reports that have been previously delivered and ability to resend them again if need be.
The retention period for archived report should be customizable...

Do you think guys it is doable?

[gandalf]

This is surely doable.
But this would turn Cacti into an archive; in other words the tables to store the PNGs will get huge.

And honestly, I fear that the request stems from a misunderstanding of rrdtool features. By default, you can zoom into any graph online and go back in time for 2 years. If more history is required, it's easy to configure that.

And there's a second feature that you may like better: graph export (I do not use that, personally).

R.

[ikorzha758]

Gandalf thank you for your reply. I believe good results can be also achieved without adding PNGs into the database.
I was thinking along the lines of a system writable "cache folder" like: /var/www/html/plugins/nectar/archive/
where the archives would be stored and auto cleaned upon expiration date (defined by user).
What do you think about that? Would you be willing to consider it?

[TheWitness]

Not a bad idea.

TheWitness

[ikorzha758]

TheWitness, would you be willing to undertake such feature addition?

[TheWitness]

Not presently. I have other priorities at the moment. I believe it's a curious feature though. However, before that feature get's introduced, there are other features that come before it IMHO.

TheWitness

[torstentfk]

Hi,

I have a feature request:
- Selecting the graphs to be part of a report, it would be fine to use the same way as adding them to a graph-tree: selecting the graphs and then choosing the report from the drop-down-list.
Now it is very click-intensive to add 10 graphs to a report.

-possibility to choose directly from a list of graphs. (now I have to select 4 drop downs and then I get the graphs) - you have to think/remember what templates you have used, the types of host you have etc...


Torsten

[TheWitness]

Hi,

I have a feature request:
- Selecting the graphs to be part of a report, it would be fine to use the same way as adding them to a graph-tree: selecting the graphs and then choosing the report from the drop-down-list.
Now it is very click-intensive to add 10 graphs to a report.

-possibility to choose directly from a list of graphs. (now I have to select 4 drop downs and then I get the graphs) - you have to think/remember what templates you have used, the types of host you have etc...


Torsten

Agreed, I even considered doing this over the weekend. I just ran out of time.

TheWitness

[gandalf]

Gandalf thank you for your reply. I believe good results can be also achieved without adding PNGs into the database.
I was thinking along the lines of a system writable "cache folder" like: /var/www/html/plugins/nectar/archive/
where the archives would be stored and auto cleaned upon expiration date (defined by user).
What do you think about that? Would you be willing to consider it?

So how do you want to see the report in that archive folder?
- The full report with texts and horizontal lines? As a PDF?
- The list of PNGs? How do you want them to be grouped to relate them to a specific report?
- ...
R.

[TheWitness]

IMHO, the only way to do this is with html2pdf. I don't want a bunch of png's and html test floating around the web server. With html2pdf, it's more manageable. In fact, we can put the information (PDF files) into the database.

TheWitness

[ikorzha758]

He came up with a great idea html2pdf....
If that is possible than that is the way it should be done store it as pdf in the database or as pdfs in the archive folder...

[gandalf]

IMHO, the only way to do this is with html2pdf.

Well, in fact that WAS part of my tuned "reports V3.0", the predecessor of nectar. Someone in our team didn't like that so I ripped it out as I did not use it, personally. Or was it a bad implementation? I don't know.
I'm not against discussing (and implementing) this. But I don't like to put it in and out every other release.
But I'm not sure if it is really useful to place the result into some Cacti accessible filesystem. You will want to transfer it to some place where you can access it from your client.
So will we need an additional ftp step, then? Or present the user with a GUI to "download" his PDF?
R.

[TheWitness]

Well, I didn't rip it out

TheWitness