LaTeX

The integrations-latex add-on writes records as a table inside a complete LaTeX document, ready to compile with pdflatex or any other standard engine. It turns pipeline output into typeset tables for reports and papers: field names become the column headings, every value is escaped so LaTeX's special characters cannot break the document, and the result is a plain-text .tex file you can edit further.

Add the LaTeX Dependency

Add the add-on alongside your DataPipeline edition (see Getting Started). It brings in no third-party libraries of its own.

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.northconcepts</groupId>
  <artifactId>northconcepts-datapipeline-integrations-latex</artifactId>
  <version>11.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

implementation 'com.northconcepts:northconcepts-datapipeline-integrations-latex:11.0.0'

Writing a LaTeX Table

LatexWriter is an ordinary DataWriter: construct it with a File or a java.io.Writer and run a job into it.

The writer produces an article document with UTF-8 input encoding, a centered tabular with one left-aligned column per field, and a horizontal rule after every row:

Call setFieldNamesInFirstRow(false) to leave out the heading row. Compile the file with pdflatex product-catalog.tex to produce a PDF.

Escaping and Schema Rules

• Special characters are escaped in headings and values alike: &, %, $, #, _, {, and } gain a backslash, while \, ^, and ~ become \textbackslash{}, \textasciicircum{}, and \textasciitilde{}. Tabs and line breaks inside a value are replaced with a space so each record stays on one table row.
• The first record defines the columns. Later records may leave fields out, in which case those cells are empty, but a record that introduces a field the first one did not have fails the job with a DataException. Give records a consistent set of fields first, for example with SelectFields or a transformer that adds the missing ones.
• Values are written as text using each field's string form: numbers and dates in their default format, booleans as true and false, and nulls as empty cells. Format values upstream, for example with BasicFieldTransformer, when you need a particular rendering.

LaTeX Pipeline Output

In DataPipeline Foundations, LatexPipelineOutput makes LaTeX available as a pipeline output next to CSV, Excel, JSON, and the other formats. Give it a FileSink and, optionally, setFieldNamesInFirstRow(false). Like every pipeline output it serializes to JSON and XML and takes part in the pipeline's generated Java code.

See the Write a LaTeX File example for a complete program, and the LaTeX Javadocs for the API.