GETTING STARTED | REPORTING | KNIME ANALYTICS PLATFORM
How to create a PDF report in KNIME with the Reporting extension
Take your first steps with low-code reporting
To start, a few words about KNIME
KNIME is an open-source platform for data analysis, reporting, and integration. It’s based on a drag-and-drop graphical interface that allows users to assemble nodes for data preprocessing (ETL), modeling, analysis, and visualization.
That’s pretty much what you’ll find if you type ‘What is KNIME?’ into a search engine.
On the other hand, I would describe KNIME as a tool (software) that allows you to enter the amazing world of data analysis without necessarily having to know a programming language. It works a bit like Lego bricks — they have different shapes and colors, and by bringing them together you can get spaceships, castles or racing cars — except that KNIME, instead of bricks, has objects called “nodes”. By connecting nodes appropriately, you can load data, analyze it, transform it and do many other things.
For example: You can create a static report. Let’s see how!
The KNIME Reporting Extension
Imagine having to produce, every Monday, a report on the performance of the websites managed by your team, one page for each website with two charts (the trend of unique visitors and visits) and two tables (the most viewed pages and the pages with the highest number of external links).
Since the introduction of the KNIME Reporting extension (in late 2023 with version 5.2 of KNIME, see: “Generate reports faster with KNIME Reporting”), making such a report in KNIME has become way easier:
- Group Loop Start node — to recursively create the visual elements (charts, text, tables) of each page of the report. Remember: our report has a different page for each managed website!
- Component — We were already used to using KNIME components to display charts and tables. Now you can tell KNIME that the component should generate a report (by checking the ‘Enable reporting’ box in the ‘Node usage and Layout’ view). That’s it.
- Report Loop End node — which collects the pages created within the loop and groups them into the final report.
- Report PDF Writer node — to create the PDF file and save it to the desired destination.
Two useful tips:
- The size of the sheet (A4, A5, legal…) and its orientation (portrait, landscape) are passed as input with the Report Template Creator node.
- To set the page break between different report slides, the option “Insert page break between reports” in the Report Loop End node must be checked.
You can find useful examples to learn more about how KNIME Reporting extension works on the KNIME Community Hub: “Reporting minimal example”.
You will find all the necessary nodes to create a report in KNIME here: KNIME Reporting extension.
