Book Image

JasperReports 3.5 for Java Developers

Book Image

JasperReports 3.5 for Java Developers

Overview of this book

Do you want to create easily understood, professional, and powerful reports from disordered, scattered data using a free, open source Java class library? If your answer is yes, this book on JasperReports is what you are looking for. 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. The book has been fully updated to use JasperReports 3.5, the latest version of JasperReports. Previously accepted techniques that have now been deprecated have been replaced with their modern counterparts. All examples in the book have been updated to use XML schemas for report templates. Coverage of new data sources that JasperReports now supports has been added to the book. Additionally, JasperReports can now export reports to even more formats than before and exporting reports to these new formats is covered in this new edition of the book. This book shows you exactly how to get started, and develop the skills to get the most from JasperReports. It introduces you to the latest version of JasperReports, and gets you creating complex and elegant reports. The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of data sources, 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 preview them in both the web 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 data sources, 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 your reports. 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. All examples have been updated to use XML schemas. New export formats, such as OpenDocument Text, and new data sources now supported by JasperReports are now covered in this updated edition.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
JasperReports 3.5 for Java Developers
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Class library dependencies


JasperReports leverages other open source Java libraries to implement some of its functionality. Some of the libraries JasperReports builds on include:

  • iText: A PDF generation and manipulation library. It has the ability of generating and manipulating RTF, XML, and HTML documents. JasperReports takes advantage of iText in order to export reports to PDF and RTF. More information about iText can be found at http://www.lowagie.com/iText/.

  • JFreeChart: A Java library for producing various charts, including pie charts, bar charts, line charts, and area charts. JasperReports takes advantage of JFreeChart to implement its built-in charting functionality. More information about JFreeChart can be found at http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart.

  • Apache POI: A Java class library to create and manipulate various Microsoft Office formats, such as Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document format. JasperReports takes advantage of POI to export reports to XLS (Microsoft Excel) format. More information about Apache POI can be found at http://poi.apache.org/.

  • JAXP: Java API for parsing and transforming XML documents. JAXP is used by JasperReports to parse XML files. JAXP is included with Java SE 5.0 and it can be downloaded separately when using earlier versions of Java SE. More information about JAXP can be found at https://jaxp.dev.java.net/.

  • Apache Commons: A collection of Java libraries providing a large number of reusable components. JasperReports takes advantage of the Commons Digester, BeanUtils, and Logging components ofApache Commons to complement JAXP for XML parsing. More information about Apache Commons can be found at http://commons.apache.org/.

    Note

    URLs provided here are for informational purposes only; the JasperReports class library already includes the required JAR files listed here. There is no need for us to download them to take advantage of their functionality within JasperReports.