Building automatically generated text into Flare

[johnnygreen]

We are currently converting our documentation from LaTeX to MadCap Flare, owing to the obvious design advantages offered by Flare. All the source files will be put into the Dev. Git repository so that the Flare outputs can be built automatically.

The problem is that some of the current content (for example, tickets in release notes) is generated dynamically using Perl and Python scripts, and the Development guys wish to keep this automatic functionality. I've told them that the only way is for me to provide snippet files that they can then complete at a particular point in time, and that I can then insert into the MadCap project. The problem then is that the dynamic nature of the output is lost and the burden falls on the MadCap Authors, who have to maintain it manually (until another snippet is supplied). We would like to ensure that the output is always up to date.

Has anyone else come across this need for auto-generated topic content, and how it might be solved within a MadCap project?

Thanks.

[BedfordWriter]

That can still be done automatically. You just need a pre-build script.
ferinstance.... Here, I have a PHP script that scrapes the developer's source code prior to each build. I do that to gather the latest error code messages, which I then include in the documentation. They add error codes from time to time, and you can bet that nobody thinks to tell the tech writer about it.
My script drops the codes and messages into pre-defined snippet files, adding a bit of formatting to build everything into a nice table. My documents use those snippets in the appropriate topics. Ta - da! Automatically generated content, fresh as of each build.