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

Summary

This chapter covered the required and optional libraries needed to add reporting capabilities to Java applications. All the libraries covered in this chapter are needed both at compile time and at run time.

The chapter provided an explanation of the different files available for download on JasperReports' website and in which conditions it is appropriate to use them. We saw which libraries are required for report compilation under a Java Development Kit as well as which additional libraries are required when compiling JRXML templates under a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Besides, the chapter also covered which libraries are required when using JDBC datasources for our reports, and finally the libraries required when exporting our reports to several formats.

Now that we have seen the libraries needed to work with JasperReports, we are ready to create our first report, which is what the next chapter is based on.