iReport Documentation

WARNING: this manual is a bit outdated, in particular chapters 7 and 8 are deprecated. The updated documentation is available as commercial manual.

Manual for iReport >= 0.2.0 (Pure Java version of iReport)

1 General Information about iReport
1.1 What is iReport?
1.2 Short History of iReport
1.3 Books about JasperReports
1.4 The Main Features of iReport
1.5 Useful JasperReports and iReport Related Links

2 Installing iReport
2.1 System Requirements
2.2 Installation and configuration
2.3 The Final Test...

3 iReport and JasperReports Basic Concepts
3.1 How JasperReports Works
3.2 Compilation and Export of Reports
3.3 Our First Very Simple Report

4 Connections and Datasources
4.1 Types of Datasource
4.2 Setting up a JDBC Connection
4.3 Setting up a Custom Datasource
4.4 Implementing a new Custom Datasource

5 Bands and Groups
5.1 Bands
5.2 Groups

6 iReport Plugins
6.1 The Abstract iReport Plugin
6.2 The Plugin File Descriptor
6.3 The Hello World Plugin

7 Using the XML Datasource
7.1 Configuring an XML Datasource
7.2 The Record Path
7.3 XML Datasource Syntax
7.4 Addressbook Sample
7.5 XML Datasource License

8 Charts
8.1 Creation of a Simple Chart

1 General Information about iReport

This is the iReport reference manual; it documents iReport version 0.3.1. As iReport is work in progress, the manual gets updated frequently (if I have sufficent time). So there is a very good chance that this version is out of date, unless you are looking at it on-line. The most recent version of this manual is available at http://ireport.sourceforge.net/docs.html in many different formats.

iReport is a powerful, intuitive and easy to use visual report designer/builder for JasperReports.
iReport is free software. It is licensed with the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE http://www.gnu.org.
If you want purchase a LGPL style licence for iReport, you can contact sales@jaspersoft.com.

IMPORTANT: Reports of bugs, as well as questions and comments should be sent to iReport forums at http://www.jasperforge.org/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&Itemid=215&func=showcat&catid=9

1.1 What is iReport?

iReport is a program that helps users and developers that use the JasperReports library to visually design reports.
Through a rich and very simple to use GUI, iReport provides all the most important functions to create nice reports in little time. iReport can help people that don't know the JasperReports library create complex reports and learn the XML syntax, taking a look to the generated code. iReport can help skilled report designers compose very complex pages, saving a lot of time.
iReport is written in Java. It was totally rewritten from version 0.2.0. For this reason, there are two manuals for iReport. The new development direction was taken for a lot of reasons. iReport has lost a bit of efficiency leaving the win32 native GUI for a clear, pure swing interface. But this is the right direction...

1.2 Short History of iReport

iReport is a visual designer for JasperReports. But What's JasperReports? JasperReports is the best (IMHO) open source reporting engine available for java community. It is developed by a small big genius called Teodor Danciu. JasperReports has always had one lack: it doesn't provide an adapted tool to visually design reports. JasperReports has hundred of features, possibilities of use are infinitely... a person that does not have much confidence with the XML could have some problems to take fully advantage from the jasperreports library .
So in little time were borne some tools to fill the design hole... in order: Designer for Jasper by Jackie Manning and JasperEdit and Jeez by Erik Swenson, the first an editor capable to preview JasperReports XML and the second an Eclipse plugin. In the same period, I was trying DataVision, a tool by Jim Menard. So my idea was join the powerful of JasperReports with the philosophy adopted by DataVision. I solved the problem of a slow java interface using... VisualJ++. The result was one of the best visual designer for JasperReports. After six months, I posted a message on JasperReports forum about the idea to develop a pure java version of iReport. The enthusiasm was such that the same day I began the porting... iReport for java is now a reality.

1.3 Books about JasperReports

The mission of this manual is to introduce you to the world of JasperReports. However, I suggest you buy the JasperReports Ultimate Guide, a fundamental manual to write jasperreports XML code (via iReport or directly by hand), for few dollars. You can find JasperReports Ultimate Guide at http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/more.docs.html.

1.4 The main features of iReport

The following list describes some of the important characteristics of iReport:

• 98% of JasperReports tags supported
• Visual designer wysiwyg with tools for draw rectangles, lines, ellipses, textfields fields, charts, subreports...
• Builtin editor with syntax heighlighting for write expression
• Support for unicode and non latin language (russian, chinese, korean,...)
• Document structure browser
• Integrated compiler and exporter
• Support of all JDBC compliant databases
• Support of all kind of JRDataSource
• Wizard to create automagically reports
• Support for subreports
• Save backup
• Support for templates
• Facilities for fonts

1.5 Useful JasperReports and iReport related links

JasperReports home page - POINTS TO SOURCEFORGE URL RIGHT NOW...
iReport home page - POINTS TO SOURCEFORGE URL RIGHT NOW...
iText home page The pdf library used by JasperReports

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