Book Image

JasperReports for Java Developers

Book Image

JasperReports for Java Developers

Overview of this book

JasperReports is the world's most popular embeddable Java open source reporting library, providing Java developers with the power to easily create rich print and web reports. This book shows you exactly how to get started, and develop the skills to get the most from JasperReports. The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of datasources, and integrating JasperReports with other Java frameworks. Starting with the basics of adding reporting capabilities to your application, and creating report templates you will first see how to produce your reports through the use of JRXML files, custom ANT targets, and then see preview them in both the browser and the native browser of JasperReports. Getting data into your reports is the next step, and you will see how to get data from a range of datasources, not only databases, but XML files, and Java Objects, among others. You will create better looking reports with formatting and grouping, as well as adding graphical elements to the report. You will export your reports to a range of different formats, including PDF and XML. Creating reports will be made even easier with a walkthrough of the iReport Designer visual designing tool. To round things off, you will see how to integrate your reports with other Java frameworks, using Spring or Hibernate to get data for the report, and Java Server Faces or Struts for presenting the report.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
12
Index

Chapter 5. Working with Other Datasources

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...