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 4. Creating Dynamic Database Reports

In the previous chapter, we learned how to create our first report. The simple report in the previous chapter contained no dynamic data. In this chapter, we will explore how to create a report from data obtained from a database.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • How to embed SQL queries into a report definition
  • How to pass rows returned by an SQL query to a report via a datasource
  • How to use report fields to display data obtained from a database in a report
  • How to display data from a database in a report by using the<textField> element of the JRXML template

    Tip

    Datasources: Definition

    A datasource is what JasperReports uses to obtain data to generate a report. Data can be obtained from databases, XML files, arrays of objects, collections of objects, and XML files.

    This chapter focuses on using databases as a datasource. The next chapter discusses other types of datasources.