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

Creating a Report "From Scratch"

In the previous section, we discussed how to quickly generate a database report by using iReport's Report Wizard. The wizard is very convenient since it allows us to create a report very quickly. However, its disadvantage is that it is not very flexible. In this section, we will cover how to create a report from scratch in iReport. Our report will show the tail number, serial number, and model of every aircraft in the FlightStats database.

To create a new report, click on the File | New Document menu item.

Creating a Report "From Scratch"

We should get a pop-up window like the following:

Creating a Report "From Scratch"

As can be seen in the screenshot, we can select the report's width and height, orientation, and Page margin. From the Columns tab, we can select columns (number), width, and spacing of the columns. From the Scriptlet tab, we can indicate what class to use as a scriptlet (if any). The More tab allows us to set the option of having the report title and/or summary in a new page and other...