Simple JasperReport Query

Question

Does JasperReports provide some functions in Java which I can use and change my jrxml.

Like change the font, add new detail section, add static text, delete something, add charts etc.

I want to do them like

someObject.setFont("Arial");

and this will set the object's font to Arial and I can also see the respective change in jrxml.

I know that iReport does this easily without any function call, but I want this thing with Java functions only as I am building some app.

If yes please provide a simple example or sites, links anthing from which I can learn. JasperReports API doc is not so good.

So you essentially want to manipulate the JRXML file programatically? You can do that by parsing the JRXML file (it is XML after all) using your favorite XML DOM-parser, manipulate the DOM object representation, and write the JRXML again — mkl
@mkl, yes I can do that surely, but isn't that cumbersome and error-prone. Thats why I need a API so when a client says hey I want to change font color on the webpage I will send request to the server where I will use java functions and just say changeFont(...) and it will take care of the rest. I hope I am clear now. :) — CoderBoy

GenericJon GenericJon · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-18T09:42:36

Yes, JasperReports has an API that allows you to do this. The cornerstone of this is the JasperDesign class, which represents your report in-memory. You should check out the No XML Design Sample, which uses the API extensively to build a report from scratch only using java. Once I had seen that example, I found that by exploring the javadoc from the JasperDesign class, I could quite easily find any method I needed to change elements on a report.

As an example, a basic approach for changing the font on an element would be to first load your JRXML into a JasperDesign object, find the element by its key, then call setFontName:

JasperDesign design = JRXmlLoader.load("path/to/your/JRXML.file");
JRElement element;
for (JRBand band : design.getDetailSection().getBands()) {
    element band.getElementByKey("elementName");
}
if (element != null) {
    ((JRDesignTextElement) element).setFontName("Arial");
}

See this question for how to add a new band. The method of doing so changed in recent versions, so a lot of the examples and tutorials online are out of date.

When you are done modifying/creating your report, you can save it or compile it like so:

JasperCompileManager.writeReportToXmlFile(design, "path/to/your/output.jrxml");
JasperCompileManager.compileReportToFile(design, "path/to/your/output.jasper");

Simple JasperReport Query

1 Answers