JasperReports leverages other open-source Java libraries to implement some of their functionality. Some of the libraries JasperReports builds on include:
- iText: iText is a PDF generation and manipulation library. It also has the ability to generate and manupulate RTF, XML, and HTML documents. JasperReports takes advantage of iText for exporting reports to PDF and RTF. More information about iText can be found at http://www.lowagie.com/iText/.
- JFreeChart: JFreeChart is a Java library for producing various charts, including pie charts, bar charts, line and area charts, and the like. 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/index.php.
- Jakarta POI: Jakarta POI is a Java class library to create and manipulate various Microsoft Office formats based on Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document format. JasperReports takes advantage of Jakarta POI for exporting reports to XLS (Microsoft Excel) format. More information about Jakarta POI can be found at http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/.
- JAXP: JAXP refers to the Java API for parsing and transforming XML documents. It is used by JasperReports to parse XML files and is included in Java SE 5.0. It has to be downloaded separately when using earlier versions of Java SE. More information about JAXP can be found at http://java.sun.com/webservices/jaxp/index.jsp.
- Jakarta Commons: Jakarta Commons is a collection of Java libraries providing a large number of reusable components. JasperReports takes advantage of the Digester, BeanUtils, and Logging components of Jakarta Commons to complement JAXP for XML parsing. More information about Jakarta Commons can be found at http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/.