I just downloaded iReport 3.6.1 for OS X and opened up a few
reports .... the annoying GUI bugs of 3.6.0 are gone and it seems nice
to use on OS X now, so goodbye iReport for Windoze. Albeit I hate the
java old-style File-Open dialog. Java needs to use the standard OS X
File-Open someday soon...
On Nov 3, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Kieran Kelleher wrote:
Hi Stéphan,
Yes, it is possible to work with NSKeyValueCodingAdditions objects
(EO's, NSDictionary, etc.). Working with EOs is what makes it really
useful in a WO-like way.
There is a tentative plan to have a full or half session on
JasperReports integration with WO at WOWODC 2010. I asked about JR 2
months ago and got a few good pointers and example code from John
Ours.
Here is a quick summary of approach.
Build the report, either hand-coding the XML (which is tedious), or
use iReport (which works directly with standard JRXML files).
However, I recommend reading, if not at least skimming, thru
Heffelfinger's book to understand the XML file sections. In iReport
you can switch between graphical view and XML view. I used latest
3.6.0 JasperReports and iReport.
For keyvaluecoding report content, define field names in the report
as keypaths, BUT using "_" instead of ".". Use underscores instead
of periods. You can use some other character too if you like, but
periods don't work as field names.
Design the report, adding summary groups, nested subsummary groups,
etc.
My recommendation is to COMPILE the report (Compile menu command in
iReport ... can be done in java on the fly or with ant as part of
build.xml too if you like). Compiling the report validates the XML
file, syntax, positioning and size of all elements and converts it
to an efficient binary format that JasperReports understands. Some
others compile on the fly, and/or compile and cache the compiled
report in the app, however if your template has a mistake,
compilation will fail... which is really bad in production The
second reason I recommend compiling in advance is that it can take
30 to 60 seconds to compile a report whereas it may take on a few
seconds to run the report using the compiled template. The more data
in the report, the longer it will take to run, so from the outset,
consider architecting this to run as a long response process that
returns the downloadable file.
Using a JRXML template with EOs has a few steps:
1) Define a JRDataSource class that provides report objects
("detail") objects to the JR engine. This JRDataSource class is
basically a custom iterator that can simply be a wrapper on an
NSArray of KeyValueCoding objects, or for huge sets of EO's can use
an ERXFetchSpecificationBatchIterator internally to provide objects
in a memory efficient way.
2) Run the report using the JRDataSource and the (compiled) jasper
template. The jasper templates would generally be stored in the
project or framework Resources dir.
JR also allows for a HashMap dictionary of "Report Parameters" which
is the 3rd parameter to the utility methods that run a report (1.
compiled report, 2. JRDataSource, 3. Report Parameters hashmap).
These can be used in report expressions to do whatever you want. For
example you could have a "devMode" boolean entry that would include
debug information in the generated report. or a "userType" key that
might conditionally render a some outer summary grouping for
management roles that is not normally rendered for a different user.
Additionally, you can define a custom "Scriptlet" class which can
provide custom "functions" to the reporting engine. An example of
this is to provide methods that take a NSTimestamp object and return
a formatted String for actually display in the report.
The iReport tool is java and runs on Mac and Windows. It is a
NetBeans platform app. However I found that the Properties view in
the Mac did not render the selected values. So I ran the Windows
version in Parallels and directly edited the jrxml template in my
Mac eclipse workspace through a parallels "network drive" share of
my Mac home dir. Scrolling some views on Windows made the view show
garbled stuff until I refreshed it ...... not sure if this was
Parallels, iReport, NB platform issue or what. Still a new version
iReport 3.6.1 is out that I have not upgraded to yet which might fix
those cosmetic GUI issues. In iReport, you can link foundation jar
or your project/framework's bin dir to the environment classpath in
iReport preferences so that you can refer to things like NSTimestamp
and/or understand the symbols in your custom Scriptlet class that is
referenced in the report.
Conceptually the "detail" section of the report relates to the
objects (EOs, KeyValueCoding objects). The field names are keypaths
(periods replace with underscores) that connect the fields to your
EOs. You can add a report group around the detail and another around
that, and another around that, etc. each group has a header and
footer section. Those can contain field values, static text, summary
values, custom expressions. You can create expressions in java (also
groovy, etc.). Rendering of the Detail, Group Header, Group Footer,
and other "bands" of the report are optional and can have
conditional expressions to render them or not dynamically. For
example a group summary might want to be rendered when there are
more than one detail EOs in the group ... easily done.
John Ours email that got me started can be found here.... (thanks
John)
http://osdir.com/ml/webobjects-dev/2009-09/msg00194.html
(find it on webobjects-dev archive for the thread ...... search
seems to suck on webobjects-dev)
...... although I have modified the code and built a few reusable
classes for the mundane handling of the long response and report
download. My classes need to be refined further to be more generic
and useful to the community and I plan to create a framework,
documentation and an example app for WOWODC to make it really easy
for anyone to easily add downloadable PDF reports to their apps.
BTW, as well as PDF, the reports can be also output as HTML, Excel,
RTF, CSV, etc. Obviously PDF is more readable for classic reports
with nested summaries whereas CSV, excel are practical for output
where each line is a detail or the same summary group.
Spend the $35 for "JasperReports 3.5 for Java Developers" on amazon
as a reference book to have ....... you will waste way more expense
guessing and figuring this out on your own IMHO.
HTH, Kieran
On Nov 3, 2009, at 2:58 AM, Mertz Stéphan wrote:
Hello Kieran,
Could you share with us the way in which you integrated jaspereport
with WebObjects?
Is it possible to use KVC and the objets graph like ReportMill ?
Thank you very much.
Stéphan
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