In the previous chapter, we mentioned that JasperReports allows us to use not only databases, but also many other sources of data to generate reports. In this chapter, we will cover how to use datasources, other than databases, to create our reports.Since creating web-based reports is by far the most common use of JasperReports, most examples in this chapter will use the technique, described in Chapter 3, to stream a PDF report to a web browser via the JasperFillManager.fillReportToStream()
method.
By the end of the chapter, you will be able to:
- Use empty datasources for reports that don't require an external datasource
- Use any implementation of
java.util.Map
as a datasource - Use arrays or collections of Java objects as datasources
- Use TableModels as a datasource
- Use an XML as a datasource
- Create your own custom datasources
All JasperReports datasources implement the net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRDataSource
interface. Reports are generated...