Report Templates

The Report Templates folder contains HTML (and other format) files to allow customizing the appearance and content of Simon reports. This folder is located within the Simon data folder, at ~/Library/Application Support/Dejal/Simon/. You can get to it quickly via the [Reveal in Finder] button in the Report Options page of the Report Info pane.

You don't need to edit the templates (or even look at them) to use Simon. Simon comes with a number of useful templates, which will be automatically installed in the Report Templates folder when Simon is first launched. The Simon website also hosts updated and user-contributed templates: check out the Simon Extras page. However, if you wish, you can tweak the provided templates to suit your requirements, or even create new ones. If you create or modify a template and think others may find it useful, please contribute it: check out the Simon Extras web page for instructions.

The Report Templates folder contains sub-folders for each template. Within each of those folders are some or all of the following items:

Most templates use HTML formatting, but this isn't a requirement. Any text-based format can be used. For example, the built-in templates demonstrate using XML for a RSS feed, and tab-delimited text.

In addition, the template files employ special Simon-specific tags, which are replaced with the tests, checks, changes, failures, and activity of Simon, plus other values. These tags use much the same conventions as regular HTML, but with distinctive delimiters. There are two main kinds of tags – block and variable:

Block tags

• Denoted with square brackets, e.g. [test].
• Have matching closing tags, e.g. [/test], just like HTML.
• Act as a scope for enclosed variables.
• Encompass HTML that should be repeated for each line, e.g. for each test on a Summary page or each Check on a Detail page.
• Can have parameters; currently the only one supported is count, to limit the number of lines used.

Variable tags

• Denoted with curly braces, without a separate closing tag, e.g. {name}.
• Have a variable name, and optionally include parameters, e.g. {date type="absolute"}.
• Parameter values must be enclosed in double quotes.
• There must not be any spaces between the parameter name, the equals sign, the quotes, and the value.
• Multiple parameters can be used, or omitted to use the default values.

Block and variable tags and their parameters are not case sensitive, so feel free to use MixedCase to make them more readable if you wish.

The Summary page has two block scopes – the document itself, and the test block. Click for more information on variables for each kind of block:

The Detail pages support several kinds of blocks:

See the Report Template parameters page for information on the available parameters.

See the above pages for more information, and the provided templates for examples.

• Template Document Variables
• Test Variables
• Check Variables
• Change Variables
• Failure Variables
• Activity Variables
• Report Template Parameters