Issues with generating HMTL/PDF reports from R view visuals (created in a component using composite view layout)

[Odko]

Hello everyone,

Issue: I am having a problem with creating report, which contains R view generated visuals, using reporting Report HTML /PDF writer nodes.

What I need to achieve: I would like to create a report (mostly in HTML) using visuals generated via R ggplot as it is highly customizable and suits my needs for image requirements for my reports.

What I tried:
For test purposes, I created two visuals, i.e. (1) one stacked bar chart in ggplot which was sent to output via Image Output Widget and (1) one bar chart using knime original node, within a component. And using the component configuration I created a layout for my (hypothetical) report as can be seen in the below image:

Then I checked whether the component is producing the two charts, which worked as supposed:

And when I extracted the report using Report HTML/PDF Writer (Labs) nodes, none of them were able to output the image produced by R view:

It would be wonderful if any of you had an idea on how I could write R generated images into HMTL reports.

Thank you so much in advance!

Odko

[AlexanderFillbrunn]

Hi @Odko,
Currently, the new reporting framework supports all the newest view nodes (the ones with the new configuration UI) and the Text View node that is present in the reporting extension. In our nightly build, there is already an updated Image Output Widget that is supported as well, but it has not found its way to the official release yet.
Kind regards,
Alexander

[Odko]

Hi @AlexanderFillbrunn,

Thank you for the reply.
Just a couple of follow up questions:

1. When do you reckon the official release of the updated Image Output Widget build is likely to be out?
2. In the meantime, are there any workarounds available, e.g. installing an earlier version of KNIME, while the widget update has not been released yet?

Thank you again!

Kind regards,
Odko

[AlexanderFillbrunn]

Hi,
I think the new widget will be out by 6th of December. I am not aware of any workarounds, sadly, because we do not have a node yet to turn HTML text into report content. If we had that, we could build our own component to render the image.
Kind regards,
Alexander

[Odko]

Hi @AlexanderFillbrunn,

Thank you for the response.
I found the newly developed “Image View” node in the latest release (5.2.0 from 6 Dec 2023) and it solved the issue!

Thank you very much!

Cheers,
Odko