Workiva iXBRL Viewer

The Workiva iXBRL Viewer allows Inline XBRL (or iXBRL) reports to be viewed interactively in a web browser. The viewer allows users to access the tagged XBRL data embedded in an iXBRL report. Key features include:

• Full text search on taxonomy labels and references
• View full details of tagged facts
• Export tables to Excel
• Visualize and navigate calculation relationships
• Produce on-the-fly graphs using XBRL data

The viewer project consists of two components:

• A plugin for the Arelle XBRL tool
• The Javascript viewer application

In order to view an iXBRL report in the viewer, it must first be prepared using the Arelle plugin. The preparation process updates the iXBRL file to include:

1. A link to the Javascript viewer
2. A block of JSON data that contains the results of processing the XBRL data and associated taxonomy

Once prepared, the resulting file provides an entirely standalone viewer. Once prepared, the viewer is entirely standalone, and does not require access to the taxonomy, or to any online services. The only dependency is on the Javascript viewer application, which is a single file which may be stored locally.

Building the ixbrlviewer

The viewer works using a single Javascript file called ixbrlviewer.js. It contains all of the javascript that runs the viewer functionality. In order to successfully build an ixbrl-viewer you need to first build the ixbrlviewer file.

1. Clone the iXBRL Viewer git repository.
2. Install npm. Instructions can be found here: https://www.npmjs.com/get-npm
3. Install the dependencies for javascript by running: npm install. This command must be run from within the ixbrl-viewer directory (i.e. the root of your checkout of the repository).
4. Run npm run prod. This will create the ixbrlviewer.js in the iXBRLViewerPlugin/viewer/dist directory.

Installing the Arelle plugin

1. Download and install Arelle
2. Open Arelle and select Manage Plugins from the Help menu.
3. Press Browse under "Find plug-in modules".
4. Browse to the iXBRLViewerPlugin directory within your checkout of the iXBRL Viewer git repository and select the __init__.py file within it.
5. Press Close and then Yes when prompted to restart Arelle.
6. You should now have a Save iXBRL Viewer instance on the Tools menu.

Preparing an iXBRL file using the Arelle GUI

To prepare an iXBRL file to work with the viewer, open the iXBRL file in Arelle, and then use the Save iXBRL Viewer instance option on the Tools menu.

You will need to provide a URL to the ixbrlviewer.js file which can be found in the viewer/dist directory within the repository. This can be either an absolute URL, or a relative URL from the iXBRL viewer file to the ixbrlviewer.js file. The easiest way to do this is to create a new directory, copy the ixbrlviewer.js file to that directory, and then specify the script URL as just "ixbrlviewer.js".

You should now save the viewer iXBRL file to a new file in the newly created directory by selecting Browse, browsing to the directory, and providing a file name.

You should now be able to open the created file in Chrome, and the iXBRL viewer should load.

Preparing an iXBRL document set using the Arelle GUI

To prepare an iXBRL document set, open the document set in Arelle. The process is as for a single file, except that a directory should be selected as the output location, rather than a file.

Preparing an iXBRL file using the Arelle command line

The plugin can also be used on the command line:

python3 Arelle/arelleCmdLine.py --plugins=/path/to/iXBRLViewerPlugin -f ixbrl-report.html --save-viewer ixbrl-report-viewer.html --viewer-url ixbrlviewer.js

Notes:

• "Arelle/arelleCmdLine.py" should be the path to your installation of Arelle
• The plugin path needs to an absolute file path

Preparing an iXBRL document set using the Arelle command line

The iXBRL Viewer supports Inline XBRL document sets. This requires the inlineXbrlDocumentSet plugin. The input is specified using JSON in the following form:

[
  {
    "ixds": [
      { "file": "file1.html" },
      { "file": "file2.html" },
    ]
  }
]

The output must be specified as a directory. For example:

python3 Arelle/arelleCmdLine.py --plugins '/path/to/iXBRLViewerPlugin|inlineXbrlDocumentSet' -f '[{"ixds":[{"file":"document1.html"},{"file":"document2.html"}]}]'  --save-viewer out-dir --viewer-url ixbrlviewer.js

The first file specified is the "primary" file, and should be opened in a browser to use the viewer. The other files will be loaded in separate tabs within the viewer.

Using build-viewer.py

As an alternative to the standard Arelle command line, the samples/build-viewer.py script can also be used. To use the script, both the Arelle source code and the iXBRLViewerPlugin must be on the Python path. e.g.:

PYTHONPATH=/path/to/Arelle:/path/to/ixbrl-viewer ./samples/build-viewer.py --help

A document set can be processed by passing a directory as input. All .html and .xhtml in the directory will be combined into a document set. The generated files will be saved into the directory specified by the --out option.

Taxonomy packages can be specified using --package-dir. All ZIP files in the specified directories will be loaded as taxonomy packages.

e.g.

PYTHONPATH=/path/to/Arelle:/path/to/ixbrl-viewer ./samples/build-viewer.py --out out-dir --package-dir /my/packages/ ixds-dir

Running Unit Tests

In order to run the javascript unit tests make sure that you have installed all of the npm requirements.

Run the following command to run javascript unit tests: npm run test

In order to run the python unit tests make sure that you have pip installed requirements-dev.txt.

Run the following command to run python unit tests: nosetests