About the Book

Create, Design, Format, and Export Reports with the world's most popular Java reporting library

• Create better, smarter, and more professional reports using comprehensive and proven methods
• Group scattered data into meaningful reports, and make the reports appealing by adding charts and graphics
• Discover techniques to integrate with Hibernate, Spring, JSF, and Struts, and to export to different file formats
• Written in a lucid and practical manner, this book introduces you to JasperReports and gets you creating complex and elegant reports

Do you want to create easily understood, professional, and powerful reports from disordered, scattered data using a free, open source Java class library? If your answer is yes, this book on JasperReports is what you are looking for. 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.

The book has been fully updated to use JasperReports 3.5, the latest version of JasperReports. Previously accepted techniques that have now been deprecated have been replaced with their modern counterparts. All examples in the book have been updated to use XML schemas for report templates. Coverage of new data sources that JasperReports now supports has been added to the book. Additionally, JasperReports can now export reports to even more formats than before and exporting reports to these new formats is covered in this new edition of the book.

This book shows you exactly how to get started, and develop the skills to get the most from JasperReports. It introduces you to the latest version of JasperReports, and gets you creating complex and elegant reports.

The book steers you through each point of report setup, to creating, designing, formatting, and exporting reports with data from a wide range of data sources, 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 preview them in both the web 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 data sources, 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 your reports. 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.

All examples have been updated to use XML schemas. New export formats, such as OpenDocument Text, and new data sources now supported by JasperReports are now covered in this updated edition.

What you will learn from this book?

• Overview of JasperReports, and what it can do for you
• Significantly reduce your report design time by using the iReport report designer
• Add reporting capabilities to your Java applications
• Learn to ease the task of report navigation by adding hyperlinks, anchors, and bookmarks to your reports
• Learn techniques to tweak the report layout and design, and add charts and graphics to your report
• Generate database reports and learn to embed SQL queries into your report definition
• Work with data sources such as arrays, collections, TableModels, and XML
• Simplify report designing by using the subreports feature that allows you to extract complex report sections into a separate report
• Export your reports to PDF, Excel spreadsheet, or Word document format, and direct HTML reports to a browser
• Integrate JasperReports with Java frameworks like Spring, Java Server Faces, Struts, and Hibernate

Approach
This book is a comprehensive and practical guide aimed at getting the results you want as quickly as possible. The chapters gradually build up your skills and by the end of the book you will be confident enough to design powerful reports. Each concept is clearly illustrated with diagrams and screen shots and easy-to-understand code.

Who this book is written for?
If you are a Java developer who wants to create rich reports for either the Web or print, and wants to get started quickly with JasperReports to do this, this book is for you. No knowledge of JasperReports is presumed.

About the Author
David Heffelfinger is the Chief Technology Officer of Ensode Technology, LLC, a software consulting firm based in the greater Washington DC area. He has been architecting, designing and developing software professionally since 1995, he has been using Java as his primary programming language since 1996. He has worked on many large scale projects for several clients including the US Department of Homeland Security, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the US Department of Defense. He has a Masters degree in Software Engineering from Southern Methodist University. David is editor in chief of Ensode.net (ensode.net), a web site about Java, Linux and other technology topics.

Table of Content

• Preface
• Chapter 1: An Overview of JasperReports
• Chapter 2: Adding Reporting Capabilities to our Java Applications
• Chapter 3: Creating your First Report
• Chapter 4: Creating Dynamic Reports from Databases
• Chapter 5: Working with Other Datasources
• Chapter 6: Report Layout and Design
• Chapter 7: Adding Charts and Graphics to Reports
• Chapter 8: Other JasperReports Features
• Chapter 9: Exporting to Other Formats
• Chapter 10: Graphical Report Design with iReport
• Chapter 11: Integrating JasperReports with Other Frameworks
• Index