Getting serious (Exporting PDF from Jasper)

Ok, ok... Blogging is good for your health :) 
My boss asked me today did I use JFlex and can I provide quick tutorial.
I used JFLex, JCUp... made some compiling efforts back then. But I can't remember a thing.
So, my first effort in getting serious :) will be my work in progress, using JasperReports and IReport.


IReport crash course
Ok, what is important.
Go to View->Fields. Field names are in my example "myObjectAttribute1" and "myObjectAttribute2". I'll use them later in Java for my data source method "getFieldValue(JRField jrField)". And thats all for simple report! :)
Put some static text, some pictures... and your text fields for "myObjectAttributes". Something like this:

Now save as "MyTemplateName.jrxml".
Compile.
Put it where your Java code can find it.
That's all.
What you need in your Java code
First you need a DataSource for your report. I needed swing table in my report so I'm getting my table model  ArrayList and making MyDataSource:

 
public class CustomJasperDataSource implements JRDataSource {

MyObjectInMyTableClass chartEntry;

Iterator iterator;

ArrayList chartEntries;

public CustomJasperDataSource(ArrayList chartEntries) {
this.chartEntries = chartEntries;
iterator = chartEntries.iterator();
}

public Object getFieldValue(JRField jrField) throws JRException {
if (jrField.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("myObjectAttribute1")) {
 return chartEntry.getMyObjectAttribute1();
}
if (jrField.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("myObjectAttribute2")){
 return chartEntry.getMyObjectAttribute2();
}
...
return null;
}

public boolean next() throws JRException {
boolean hasNext = iterator.hasNext();
if (hasNext) {
 chartEntry = (MyObjectInMyTableClass) iterator.next();
}
return hasNext;
}

}

Invoking Jasper
This is called when you press some swing button:

 
protected void jButtonCreatePdfActionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {

 JasperPrint jp = generateReport(myArrayListOfData);
 JasperViewer jasperViewer = new JasperViewer(jp, false);
 jasperViewer.setVisible(true);

}

And this is how generateReport method looks like:

 
private JasperPrint generateReport(ArrayList data) {
    JasperPrint jasperPrint = null;
    String templateName = "MyTemplateName.jasper";
    try {
        jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(templateName,
                new HashMap(), new CustomJasperDataSource(data));
    } catch (JRException e) {
                  doSOmeExcCatching();
    }
    return jasperPrint;
}