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. While such reports are pivotal in managing business information more effectively, creating and customizing them can get tedious.

This book will give you recipes to solve common JasperReports problems to make your life easier. It will take you through complex examples related to JasperReports with step-by-step instructions on how to solve them.

The author's experience in creating reports enables him to share over 50 recipes to develop crystal-clear business reports using the capabilities of JasperReports and the amazing features provided by its visual report designer tool: iReport.

This cookbook will arm you to develop user-friendly reports by using multiple types of data in the same report, thereby saving your time in sorting, arranging, or extracting data and making the whole process effortless. First you will learn to do basic things such as creating, sizing, positioning, and enhancing the titles, headers, footers of the report. You will move on to working with the body and footer of the report, including using parameters to filter records during report processing and implementing nested hierarchy. Second, you will learn to enhance the look and feel of your report by deploying and reusing styles, and by using designs, textual effects, background images, and watermarks. You will also learn to use mathematical and logical expressions such as counting the number of records with a particular field value, grouping records, applying styles on your data based on logical or mathematical conditions, and so on.

Then you will be able to do advanced things such as working with a variety of data sources: relational data, XML data, model beans of Java applications, and also multiple relational databases at once. You will learn to build a cover page and table of contents for multi-page reports, display multi-dimensional page numbering, and much more. You will be able to design simple and multi-level summary reports, cross-tabs with dynamic rows and columns, create bar charts, and display data trend graphs in your reports. Lastly and very importantly, you will be able to generate reports from Java Swing applications after you learn how to use JavaWrappers for your JasperReport.

Create and enhance your business reports using the various functionalities of JasperReports and iReport

What you will learn from this book

• Create, position, and enhance the title, header, footer, and body of your report
• Use dynamic titles--those that can change during report processing
• Use mathematical and logical expressions to calculate sum, average, maximum, and to sort, arrange, and extract data making it easier for you to analyze, share, and manage business information more effectively
• Create a report from various data sources such as relational data, XML data, or model beans of Java applications
• Create multi-page reports, with a cover page and table of contents (TOC) and manage pagination of multiple types of data
• Use sub-reports to design a multi-column report
• Design simple or multi-level summary report, and cross-tabs
• Create bar charts and graphs to show data trends
• Generate reports from Java Swing applications or web applications

Approach

The entire book is a comprehensive collection of recipes meant to tutor you on making and enhancing reports. Each recipe provides you with easy step-by-step descriptions of the actions necessary to accomplish a specific task with explanations to help you to understand how and why each action was undertaken. Example values and code samples are used throughout the recipes, which makes adaptation for individual needs easy. Each recipe uses a concrete example for easy understanding.

Who this book is written for

This book is for Java developers who want to use JasperReports to create user-friendly business reports. It is for those who may be familiar with JasperReports but want to dive into advanced JasperReports activities.

If you know how to use Microsoft Word you can also learn how to design business reports using iReport by following the recipes of this cookbook.

Although the primary audience of this cookbook are report designers, however Java and XML developers will find this book useful in understanding how Jasper's XML code works and how to wrap JasperReports functionality in your Java Swing or Web applications.