What this book covers

Chapter 1, An Overview of JasperReports, introduces you to JasperReports and how it came to be. It gives you an insight to JasperReports' capabilities and features, and also an overview of the steps involved in generating reports using JasperReports.

Chapter 2, Adding Reporting Capabilities to Java Applications, teaches you how to add reporting capabilities to your Java applications. You will have your development and execution environment set up to successfully add reporting capabilities to your Java applications by the end of this chapter.

Chapter 3, Creating Your First Report, shows you how to create, compile, and preview your first report in both JasperReports' native format and web browser. It also briefs you about the JRXML elements corresponding to different report sections.

Chapter 4, Creating Dynamic Reports from Databases, continues with report creation, exploring how to create a report from the data obtained from a database. It also teaches you to generate reports that are displayed in your web browser in the PDF format.

Chapter 5, Working with Other Datasources, uses datasources other than databases, such as empty datasources, arrays or collections of Java objects, Maps, TableModels, XML, CSV files, and custom datasources to create reports, enabling you to create your own datasources as well.

Chapter 6, Report Layout and Design, gets you creating elaborate layouts, by controlling report-wide layout properties and styles, dividing the report data into logical groups, adding images, background text, and dynamic data to the reports, conditionally printing the report data, and creating subreports.

Chapter 7, Adding Charts and Graphics to Reports, takes you to more appealing reports by showing how to take advantage of JasperReports' graphical features and create reports with graphical data like geometric shapes, images, and 2D and 3D charts.

Chapter 8, Other JasperReports Features, discusses the JasperReports features that lets you create elaborate reports, such as displaying report text in different languages, executing Java code snippets using scriptlets, creating crosstab reports, running a query with the results of a different query, adding anchors, hyperlinks, and bookmarks to the reports.

Chapter 9, Exporting to Other Formats, demonstrates how to export reports to the formats supported by JasperReports, such as PDF, RTF, ODT, Excel, HTML, CSV, XML, and plain text and how to direct the exported reports to a browser.

Chapter 10, Graphical Report Design with iReport, helps you get your hands on a graphical report designer called iReport, so that you can design reports graphically, and also, using iReport's graphical user interface.

Chapter 11, Integrating JasperReports with Other Frameworks, explains how to integrate JasperReports with several popular web application frameworks and ORM tools, such as Hibernate, JPA, Spring, JSF, and Struts.