The Java RIA Framework

Hi Prakash,

Welcome to Jspresso and thanks for the good words !

As of now, there is no built-in integration of either iText or Charting libraries in Jspresso UI. But there is a built-in integration of JasperReports that allows you to dynamically generate and visualize JasperReports (in PDF and including charts) into the browser running the frontend. It is not documented yet but I could give you the directions if this may fit what you're looking for.

Best regards,
Vincent

Hi Prakash,

I did my homework . Here are the basic steps to integrate a simple Jasper report into a Jspresso application.

Forewords :

1. The jasper reports / jfree / iText dependencies were a little outdated in the Jspresso root pom. I've upgraded them to :
   Jasper 3.5.2
   iText 2.1.5
   jfree 1.0.13
2. I slightly reworked the integration to make it more straightforward. So everything detailed in this post relies on 3.0.1-SNAPSHOT.
3. I've implemented a working example on the HR sample application. You can checkout the complete source code here :
   

   svn co https://svn.jspresso.org/jspresso/app-hrsample/trunk/

4. Once checked-out, the report is located here :
   

   core/src/main/jasperreports/org/jspresso/hrsample/report/Company.jrxml

   and its resource bundle files :

   core/src/main/resources/org/jspresso/hrsample/i18n/Report_*.properties

Here we go :

• The first step is, of course, to design your Jasper report (I used iReport 3.6.0).
  Jspresso will provide your report with the following inputs (so design it accordingly) :
  • The JDBC datasource of your application backend - in our case, the HSQL in-memory database.
  • An implicit set of built-in parameters, among which entity_id, that is the primary key of the contextual model entity - in our case, the displayed Company entity.
  • An arbitrary set of user-defined parameters that the user will be prompted to fill-in - in our case, the report title.
• Save it  as JRXML under a sub-directory of core/src/main/jasperreports. This is where the maven build will pick it up to compile and package it into your application.
• And finally, integrate it in your Spring conf file. In views.xml :
  • Describe your report :
    

    <bean id="company.report" parent="abstractReportDescriptor">
      <property name="reportDesignUrl" value="classpath:org/jspresso/hrsample/report/Company.jasper" />
      <property name="propertyDescriptors">
          <bean class="org.jspresso.framework.model.descriptor.basic.BasicStringPropertyDescriptor">
            <property name="name" value="title" />
          </bean>
      </property>
    </bean>

  • Install the Jspresso built-in action that will ask the user for user-defined parameters (title in the example), run the report, and display it (either in PDF for the Flex, Qooxdoo, Wings or ULC GUI or directly using the Jasper preview component for the Swing GUI). In this example, we declare it as an action in the company main view :
    

    <bean id="Company.module.view" parent="Company.organization.view">
      <property name="actionMap">
        <bean class="org.jspresso.framework.view.action.ActionMap">
          <property name="actionLists">
            <list>
              <bean class="org.jspresso.framework.view.action.ActionList">
                <property name="name" value="FILE" />
                <property name="actions">
                  <list>
                    <ref bean="saveModuleObjectFrontAction" />
                    <ref bean="reloadModuleObjectFrontAction" />
                    <bean parent="staticReportAction">
                      <property name="reportDescriptor" ref="company.report"/>
                    </bean>
                  </list>
                </property>
              </bean>
            </list>
          </property>
        </bean>
      </property>
    </bean>

I hope this is clear enough. Don't hesitate to post back if you have any problem.

Keep me informed about your presentation !

Best,

Vincent

Hi Prakash,

First of all, thanks for your feedback.

Following your idea of integrating charts in Jspresso, I've implemented fusioncharts-free integration. This library includes animated flash charts that look much better, to my opinion, than JFreeChart. I've made it available seemlessly to all Jspresso supported UI frontends (including swing with the help of a native library, DJ-NativeSwing). If you want to get an idea of how to include a chart in a Jspresso based application, read this post.

Thanks for the suggestion

Regarding the comments of your audience :

Developers want more details about the layout's in the view.

Jspresso includes a lot more layouts than the ones used in HR sample. To get an idea of them, explore the class hierarchy of org.jspresso.framework.view.descriptor.basic.BasicCompositeViewDescriptor. Its subclasses allow for arranging sub-views in flexible ways, including a GridbagLayout like layout (org.jspresso.framework.view.descriptor.basic.BasicConstrainedGridViewDescriptor).

They wanted hyperlink's to navigate to entities.

Unfortunately, there's no such feature planned.

Unluckily wings was not working in ie when i showed the demo app

That's bad... Maybe do you have some more info (browser version, OS, public demo site or local build) ? By the way, the 3.0.1-SNAPSHOT includes a new AJAX frontend (Qooxdoo) that is a fantastic, pure javascript library. The implemented architecture in Jspresso is the same as the Flex one (a smart/rich client that drastically lowers the server-side memory consumption compared to Wings or ULC), with a very high rendering quality. Take a look at the screenshot attached to the post mentionned above.

Multilingual support was well received.

Thanks, I18N has been taken care from the ground up.

Some asked is there a way to create custom widgets.

There actually is, but it's a somehow advanced feature. All Jspresso UI screens are generated on the fly at runtime using view factories. These factories are open for extension.

XML configuration for views and model got mixed response.( some said its exhaustive).

There's an exciting contribution (Sugar For Jspresso) making its way to the Jspresso codebase : a groovy DSL. Instead of writing Spring XML, you write groovy code. It leads to clearer and more compact description (1/10th!). Again, refer to the post mentionned above to get an idea of the Jspresso near future regarding Domain Specific Language.

Don't hesitate to comment if you need further information.

Best regards,

Vincent

Hi all, i'm trying to run hrsample for the 1st time to evaluate jspresso 3.0.1-snapshot... although i'm having this problem with a report:

[INFO] [jasperreports:compile-reports {execution: compile-jasper-reports}]
[INFO] Compiling 1 report design files.
[INFO] Compiling report file: org/jspresso/hrsample/report/Company.jrxml
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] : org.codehaus.mojo.jasperreports.JasperReportsMojo@faf015
Error compiling report design : /home/cvieira/WorkSpace/hrsample/core/src/main/jasperreports/org/jspresso/hrsample/report/Company.jrxml

Error compiling report design : /home/cvieira/WorkSpace/hrsample/core/src/main/jasperreports/org/jspresso/hrsample/report/Company.jrxml : Error compiling report java source files : /home/cvieira/WorkSpace/hrsample/core/target/jasperreports/java/Company_1261150999113_236899.java

Can anyone help, please! Thanks

Carlos

I got the following errors.

[INFO] Compiling report file: org\jspresso\hrsample\report\Company.jrxml

08/01/2010 4:59:27 PM org.apache.commons.digester.Digester error

SEVERE: Parse Error at line 2 column 441: Document root element "jasperReport",

must match DOCTYPE root "null".

org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Document root element "jasperReport", must match

DOCTYPE root "null".

...

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[INFO] : org.codehaus.mojo.jasperreports.JasperReportsMojo@cee41f

Error compiling report design : C:\Jason\workspace\hrsample\core\src\main\jasper

reports\org\jspresso\hrsample\report\Company.jrxml

Error compiling report design : C:\Jason\workspace\hrsample\core\src\main\jasper

reports\org\jspresso\hrsample\report\Company.jrxml : org.xml.sax.SAXParseExcepti

on: Document root element "jasperReport", must match DOCTYPE root "null".

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any idea?

These are the steps that I've done

1. create project following steps in "10 minutes tutorial".

2. import hrsample to the project

3. hrsample runs properly in tomcat

4. checkout the following files from svn to the project

  - core\src\main\jasperreports\org\jspresso\hrsample\report\Company.jrxml

  - core\src\main\resources\org\jspresso\hrsample\i18n\Report.properties

  - core\src\main\resources\org\jspresso\hrsample\i18n\Report_en.properties

  - core\src\main\resources\org\jspresso\hrsample\i18n\Report_fr.properties

5. do mvn --debug clean compile, and got the above error

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