pentaho report designer conditional message-field

Question

In Pentaho Report Designer 5.0.1, I wish to display a message-field as follows:

Expired 12 JUN 2014

So I set up the value of the message-field as:

Expired $(date_expired,date,dd MMM yy)

The message-field should be displayed if the record has a date_expired value, and nothing at all if the date_expired is null. Currently the message-field displays

Expired

even when the field is null. So based on the value of date_expired, the message-field must display or not.

Assistance is highly appreciated. Thanx

Answer 1

select that message box, and then Structure -> Attributes -> value, and then type the following formula:

=IF(ISNA([date_expired]);"";"Expired "&TEXT([date_expired];"dd MMM yyyy"))

You can also setup the 'visible' under Structure -> Style -> visible and then use the following formula:

=NOT(ISNA([date_expired]))