Developer Guide Jasper

Developer Guide „mireport“Version 1.0

February 14th 2010

Author: Florian Müller

richability Erlenstrasse 5 4410 Liestal T +41 79 279 1344 [email protected] http://www.richability.com

Summary

What is mireport?Reporting is one of the most important points when developing applications, it is nice to store the quarterly company results

within your application in order to simply use them, but it is even nicer if you could simply export this data to PDF/Word/xyz

in order to present them during a meeting.

Adobe Flex offers several nice reporting components within your application, unfortunately you can not export this data

(except you wanna pay +/-100.000 $ in order to use LiveCycle Data Service, PDF reporting is part of LCDS). So either you

have to launch the application during your meeting or take some screenshots - but anyway nobody will be able to use this

data as it is in a non-Excle/Word/xyz format so you end up in typing in the data to your own Excel sheet.

On the server side there is a proven technology called JasperReports (http://jasperforge.org/projects/jasperreports) which

enables you to adress this issue - creating reports based on data stored in your database to whatever format. But how to

„connect“ JasperReport on the server and how to push the server generated reports to your Flex application? That‘s exactly

where mireport comes in, mireport is a simple Flex - JasperReport - interface which allows you to pass paramteres from your

Flex application to JasperReports and returns a nice looking report. Currently mireport supports PDF, XLS and RTF output

(see screenshot below).

mireport Developers Guide 1

Nice Flex reports -

but how to use this

data in an Excel

sheet for example?

Who should use mireport?Any developer heading for the 100% Flex solution should use this component. Anything else like PDF generation within the

client based on some libraries is rather workaround than 100% solution. Customers love reports and that‘s the reason you

will love mireport!

How can I use mireport?mireport ships as simple .swc in order integrate to your Flex client. As report generation actually is executed on the server

you also need a counterpart on the server (ships as single jar file) which handles communication with the client component.

The web.xml of your application finally needs to point to the servlets used for report generation. Please take a look into our

step by step guide which is part of this document.

Is mireport usage free of charges?There is a version calles „mireport basic“ available free of any charges, this version is limited to PDF generation. If you

requires RTF/XLS generation there is a version called „mireport advance“, pricing is 79 $ - please order via

[email protected].

Anything else to know about mireport?mireport can be used with Flex 3 (Halo based component) and Flex 4 (Spark based component). Flex 4 provides pretty easy

skinning capabilities, that‘s the reason the nice (at least we think it is nice ;-)) metal background is only supported with Flex 4

usage. The Flex 3 version does not look as nice as the metal one, but works exactly the same way (same API etc.) the Flex 4

version does.


1 Getting started with mireportThe Getting Started part uses a simple demo project, based on the demo project the usage of mireport will be shown. You

just need to get the basic idea of hooking the mireport Flex component to the server part, anything beyond this (such as

creating magnificent reports for example) is core JasperReport knowledge, that‘s where repsonsibility of mireport stops and

your creativity drops in.

The demo project is based on Flex 4 and created with Flash Builder 4, if you are using Flex 3 this does not make any

difference except some screenshots might look litte different.

The example requires another application besides Flash/Flex Builder called iReport (http://jasperforge.org/plugins/project/

project_home.php?projectname=ireport), iReport is a report designer which enables you to setup your Jasper reports (.jrxml

files) within minutes.

In case you are confused about iReport, JasperReport, mireport and Flex and wonder how these pieces fit together you

should not worry, we will explain the big picture within the next chapter!

1.2 ConceptsAs already said, JasperReport is the „heart“ of the whole report generation, JasperReport has nothing to do with Flex, it‘s a

core Java based reporting engine. Of course any report requires data, so JasperReport does not create .pdf/.xls etc. only,

JasperReport links in the data to the report as well. In a nuthsell: you define a report layout and a query, JasperReport does

the rendering and mixes in the data, fetched from the database directly. See the following scribble for assertion.


Ok, you got it? The developer „somehow“ (we will talk about this in the next paragraph) defines how the report should look

like and which data in terms of which query is tied into the report. This information is passed to the JasperReport Engine

which actually querries the database and renders the report. That‘s the core of all and we have encapsulated the core in

order to save your time and money...

As already mentioned, the developer „somehow“ needs to bundle the report layout data and the query behind. That‘s what

iReport does, iReport enables developers to create reports via Drag & Drop instead of coding Jasper XML. So your starting

point, before you tie in our report component to your Flex application is always iReport.

Now that you got the core idea of JasperReport and iReport let‘s start to chalk out the big picture. Let‘s take a look on the

mireport component within the context of a Flex application. Please have a look into the following figure:


The mireport component is embedded into a default Flex application. The component is initialized with several parameters

(we will discuss these in detail when starting our example), these parameters cause the component to contact the server. On

the server side a mireport Servlet handles the incoming requests, extracts parameters and triggers report generation. The

report is returned as a link to the application, the link is resolved immediately and the report is being displayed.

Why do we return a link instead of returning PDF/RTF/XLS data directly? Well, the reason is that browsers behave totally

different when receiving RTF data for instance (books could be published with this so called MIME type browser behavior...).

Some browsers might open the result directly, others fire up an applications and some do not display RTF at all. So we can

not guarantee what happens with the result. But what we can guarantee: HTML is always displayed perfectly - so we simply

return HTML (this will be displayed within the preview) and links to the PDF/RTF/XLS files generated on the server.

The user can press one of the icons and dependent on the browser behavior the file will be opened. Or the user presses

„right mouse - save target as“ in order to save the source of the link.

But you should not care about those details as we already cared for them, so you simply can use our component „as is“.

The important point is the servlet and the Flex mireport component: these talk to each other and return the desired report to

the Flex client.

Of course static querries are boring as you are able to receive one data view only: „Select * from User“ will always return all

users - but what if you want all users aged > 20 in your report? JasperReport enables you as well to create reports with

parameter based querries, for example you could create a report based on a query called „Select * from User where age >

$parameter“ and pass in the parameter - dependent on what you pass in the report result will change.

The mireport component allows you to pass in query parameters as well, we will see this during the example - so you are

not limited to static reports, your reports differ dependent on the data passed in from the client.

2 mireport by exampleNow that you got the backgrounds we simply start using the component, you will see usage is pretty straight forward and

benefit to your application is immensly.

2.1 PrerequisitsThe following applications are required to be installed/available on your machine:

• Flex/Flash Builder

• iReport

• Application Server (we will be using Tomcat)

• Database to query against (we will be using MySQL)

• JasperReport jar files (we packaged these to our bundle, folder called extrenal libs is available)

• mireport.swc

2.2 Creating the reportLet‘s start by creating the report. As this is not an iReport tutorial we will quickly step through, in case of issues please refer

to iReport help/tutorials as it is not goal of this document to teach you iReport.


1/8: launch iReport and select File - New, select a template (we use the template called „Coffee Landscape“) and launch

the report wizzard by select Launch Report Wizzard in the bottom of the screen;

In the next Wizard screen you have to specify a name for the report, let‘s use „myreport“. You have to specify a destination

as well, make sure you remember the destination as we will require the destination later on.


Next step is definition of datasource. Select the New button in order to create a new datasource for your report, another

Wizard launches which will guide you through the process of creating a new datasource:

Select Database JDBC connection as connection type:

Specify the database credentials (DB user, DB URL etc.) and press save button:


Ok, back to the originally launched wizard you should be able to pick your newly created datasource now:

You have to specify a report query, of course this query depends on your underlying database. Before you actually start with

passing parameters we suggest to start with a simple „SELECT * FROM YourTable“, in your case YourTable is called Item, a

table holding several item positions...


The next upcoming dialog can be used to check whether datasource etc. have been specified correctly, if so iReport asks

you which columns you want to include to your report. We include all columns except the image column:

The next (nearly last!) dialog will ask you for grouping, we do not specify any grouping:


Last you can finally create the report by pressing the finish button, the repoirt structure will be displlayed within the iReport

application

...that‘s what your report might look like:


Now you can adapt the report (changing title, adding images etc.), as already mentioned: iReport allows you to do a lot

within the space of reporting. You can easily create a report on your own without using any templates, we just used the

template approach in order to get fastly some stuff which is working...

2.2 Testing the reportWithin the iReport environment you can already now simulate what JasperReport will do later on: connect the database,

fetch the data and display the report. Simply select Preview in the header and the whole generation process will be

triggered, dependent on your data you should see a report populated with data:


Ok, you got the idea of generation? Then, time has come to smoehow push the report to the client and trigger report

generation by the client instead of using the Preview button.

2.3 Important Report adaptions - Java instead of Groovy & Troubleshooting!Before we start triggering generation from the client there is one important thing we have to change in our report. Since we

want JasperReport to create a report based on core Java we have to exclude the Groovy stuff, otherwise Groovy libraries

need to be available. Select the top node of your report in the left panel and scroll down the properties window in the right,

you will find an entry called Language there:


Select Java instead of Groovy, save your changes and double check whether your report is still working by switiching to the

preview again, in 99% of all reports report generation will fail, you can check the error window in the bottom of iReport there

you will find the cause for the error, iReport will give you message similar to this one:

This is really a nasty error as this error would not occur if iReport was using Java as basic language instead of Groovy stuff.

Anyway, to fix this issue, double click the error and the expression builder shows displaying the expression causing the error:


In our case an int value is expected but Integer is used:

$V{REPORT_COUNT}%2 == 0

So you have to cast the Integer to an int value by appending the following Java afunction:

$V{REPORT_COUNT}.intValue()%2 == 0

Now this error should be resolved, often there occurs a second casting error, but simply try whether generation works now

by switching to the preview mode. It might fail again by complaining about a boolean/Boolean cast, again double click the

error and you might find something similar to this in the Expression Builder:

$V{REPORT_COUNT}.intValue()%2 == 0

This needs to be changed to a Boolean value as a Boolean value is expected:

Boolean.valueOf($V{REPORT_COUNT}.intValue()%2 == 0)

2.4 Preparing your Flex clientOk, let‘s embed the report component and see some reports within a Flex application. We assume you have created a Flex

project, our project is called mireportUsage. The project is a combined Flex/Java project, so all Java and server related stuff

goes into this project as well - of course you can setup a second separate project as well in order to handle the backend

part but for simplicity we used the combined way.

In order to use the report component you simply have to add the mireport.swc to the flex_libs folder:

When creating a MXML file in your project and switiching to the design mode you should see there our new component

called Report:


Notice: there is another component called iFrame which also appears in the component panel. mireport heavily uses this

component, basically all report visualization is based on an iframe concept. The iframe component is a sparate component,

free of charge without any usage limitations, the original component is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/flex-iframe/.

Simply drag the Report component to your application, the report component appears on your stage and you can position

the component same way you usually do with Flex components.


The component is ready to be configured now (you have to pass in the report being rendered, Server adress etc.), before we

actually start the configuration work the server part is hooked in.

2.5 Serverside configurationFirst of all you have to add tsome jars to your project (in our case we simply drop these to WebContent/WEB-INF/lib). In the

mireport download package there is a folder called external libs, the jars within this folder should be entirely added to your

project (except the case you use these already and for this reason already added these within your project). The mireport.jar

from the lib folder needs to be added as well. The jars can be described by listing these in different categories:

mireport related (lib folder)

• mireport.jar

JasperReport related classes (extrenal libs)

• jasperreports-3.5.2.jar

• jfreechart-1.0.13.jar

• iText-2.1.7.jar

• poi-3.2-FINAL-20081019.jar

Utility related classes (extrenal libs)

• commons-collections-2.1.jar

• commons-digester-2.0.jar

• jcommon-1.0.16.jar

Database related (if you are using differnet DB than MySQL your database driver gies here) (extrenal libs)

• mysql-connector-java-5.0.4-bin.jar

As report generation will be triggered from the client you have to modify your web.xml and add the report servlets. SImply

add the following snippet to your web.xml:

<servlet> <servlet-name>ReportEngine</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.ReportServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>ReportEngine</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/ReportEngine</url-pattern></servlet-mapping>

<servlet> <servlet-name>CredentialServlet</servlet-name>


<servlet-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.CredentialServlet</servlet-class> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>CredentialServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/CredentialServlet</url-pattern></servlet-mapping>

<servlet> <servlet-name>PDFServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.PDFServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>PDFServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/PDFServlet</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><servlet> <servlet-name>RTFServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.RTFServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>RTFServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/RTFServlet</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><servlet> <servlet-name>XLSServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.XLSServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>XLSServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/XLSServlet</url-pattern></servlet-mapping><servlet> <servlet-name>ImageServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>net.sf.jasperreports.j2ee.servlets.ImageServlet</servlet-class></servlet><servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>ImageServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/reportImage</url-pattern></servlet-mapping>

<listener> <listener-class>com.richability.ireport.servlet.SessionListener</listener-class></listener>




Ok, you‘re almost close to it! In the very early beginning of this guide a report has been created via iReport (we kindly asked you to remember where this report is stored, now time has come to lookup this report again!). This report will be used on the serverside for report generation, so we have to copy this report to the server part of the project.

In order to ensure reports are found and looked up correctly you have to create a folder called reports on the same level your WEB-INF folder resides (in one of the next releases we provide path adaption, for the first release you have to use this static approach which saves you from additional configuration efforts).

DO NOT CREATE A FOLDER ON YOUR OWN!

Instead of this we prepared a folder for you within the build directory called reports. Copy and paste this folder. Reason for using this folder: this folder contains three images which will be used in the iframes. These images are required, o-therwise you wont see PDF/Word/Excel buttons in the report component.

One more thing about images (as the report we have created uses images, the coffee beans). If you use images, iReport will put these to the same level your .jasper file resides. As the images need to be available as well you have to copy the images used in your report as well to the reports folder. A dedicated Jasper servlet will lookup images and embed these to your report, so it is important to have the images in the report folder as well (see the coffee.jpg and coffee_stain.png file). Dont mix the report images with „our“ images in the images folder. The images folder has nothing to do with the images used within your report!

Serverside configuration is finished now, in case your application uses several reports simply drop these to the reports folder.

2.6 Putting it all togetherOk, the component is embedded to the client, the server is „ready to report“, so the lst step is to pass in some parameters

to the Flex component as the report currently has no clue which database to connect, which report to generate etc.. We

have created a detailed ASdoc which gives you information regarding parameters, simply have a look into the API if things

need deeper explanations.

Open the Screen containing the Report component and switch to the source view, your component should look like this:

<ns1:Report x="37" y="31"></ns1:Report>

1) Add the database connection parameters (remember: generation is executed on the server, so your server will resolve the

database URL - localhost string is totally fine in case the database resides on the same server the servlet container


does...):

<ns1:Report x="37" y="31" databaseURL="jdbc:mysql://localhost/warehouse" databaseUser="root" databasePassword=""driver="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver">

2) Add the server host as the Flex component needs to know where report generation is executed:

<ns1:Report x="37" y="31" databaseURL="jdbc:mysql://localhost/warehouse" databaseUser="root" databasePassword="" host="http://localhost:7070/mireportUsage/">

3) Add the report you want to display within the component:

<ns1:Report x="37" y="31" databaseURL="jdbc:mysql://localhost/warehouse" databaseUser="root" databasePassword="" host="http://localhost:7070/mireportUsage/" reportFile="myreport.jasper">

These basic parameters are always required - for additional parameters (text adaption etc.) please refer to the ASDoc. By the way, you are ready to report now! Deploy the application and you will see a nice JasperReport being renered within the component!


http://localhost:7070/ireport/




3 HowTosHere we have put several „HowTos“ allowing you to use the report component more efficiently.

3.1 Howto switch to between reportsOf course there will not be only a single report you want to display - you might have several .jasper FIles within your reports

directory. And of course you want to switch between these reports during runtime. This is simple, you just need to change

the reportFile Property and the new report will be tied in by the component:

reportComponent.reportFile = "myreport.jasper";

or

reportComponent.reportFile = "cherry.jasper";

or

reportComponent.reportFile = "flower.jasper";

A whole Switch Report example might look like this:

<local:Report id="reportComponent" x="37" y="31" databaseURL="jdbc:mysql://localhost/warehouse" databaseUser="root" databasePassword="" driver="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"


host="http://localhost:7070/mireportUsage/" reportFile="myreport.jasper"></local:Report><s:Panel x="737.95" y="34.3" width="250" height="200" title="Adapt report"> <s:Label x="10" y="15" text="Select report"/> <mx:ComboBox id="cb_report" x="100" y="10" editable="true" width="140" change="{o-nReportChange()}"> <mx:dataProvider> <fx:Array> <fx:String>Coffee</fx:String> <fx:String>Cherry</fx:String> <fx:String>Flowers</fx:String>

</fx:Array> </mx:dataProvider> </mx:ComboBox></s:Panel>

<fx:Script> <![CDATA[ private function onReportChange():void { if (cb_report.text == "Coffee") { reportComponent.reportFile = "myreport.jasper"; } if (cb_report.text == "Cherry") { reportComponent.reportFile = "cherry.jasper"; } if (cb_report.text == "Flowers") { reportComponent.reportFile = "flower.jasper"; } } ]]></fx:Script>

3.2 HowTo set custom title and descriptive labelsThere are several labels which can be adapted by you for example in order to present the title of the report currently being

viewed. See the following figure to see the adaptive properties:


http://localhost:7070/mireportUsage/

http://localhost:7070/mireportUsage/

• Title text: reportTitle property

• Available Report Formats Text: descriptionText property

• Hint text: hintText property

Whenever these properties change the report component will directly reflect these changes. The following example gives you

an idea on changing these properties:

...

..

.<s:Label x="10" y="69" text="Set title"/><s:Label x="10" y="99" text="Set left text"/><s:TextInput x="100" y="59" width="140" id="txt_title"/><s:TextInput x="100" y="90" width="140" id="txt_reportFormats"/><s:Label x="10" y="133" text="Set hint text"/><s:TextInput x="100" y="121" width="140" id="txt_hint"/><s:Button x="173.05" y="151" label="Apply" width="67" click="onApply()"/><mx:HRule x="10" y="43" width="230"/><mx:HRule x="9" y="184" width="230"/>...// apply text values...


private function onApply():void{ reportComponent.reportTitle = txt_title.text; reportComponent.descriptionText = txt_reportFormats.text; reportComponent.hintText = txt_hint.text;}

3.3 HowTo switch from portrait to landscapeBefore we actually start explaining this simple property we have to chalk out again: it‘s not about generating landscape or

portrait reports!

As you are familar with the iReport/Jasper backgrounds now, you will now that landscape and portrait report, both displaying

the same data, result in two different .jasper files. And dynamic .jasper generation is not on our scope, so the property is only

about component sizing.

In the bottom of the mireport component there is a sheet button which enables to trigger these sizing actions by the user:

If the user presses the button the component width will be increased (920px width, 450px height, Landscape mode) or

decreased (670px width, 450px height, Portrait mode).


If you want to deny access to these user triggered sizing activieties you can do so by setting the property

displayLandscapePortraitSwitch to false, the icon wont be displayed then:

There is one more option regarding landscape/portrait mode, you can set the mode (=width of the component) on your own

by setting the reportFormat property either to „landscape“ or „portrait“:

// landscape/portrait switch...private function onChangeFormat():void{ if (rdg_format.selectedValue == "portrait") reportComponent.reportFormat = "portrait"; else reportComponent.reportFormat = "landscape";}This is typically used when you take over control regarding width of the component, for example if you want to display a

report and know exactly: this report is a landscape report, so I have to switch the component to landscape directly.

3.4 HowTo set a custom tooltip text for the landscape/portrait buttonYou can overwrite the default tooltip text for the landscape/portrait button by setting the protraitTooltipText or

landscapeTooltipText property:

// apply tooltips


private function onApplyTooltips():void{ reportComponent.portraitTooltipText = txt_portraitTooltip.text; reportComponent.landscapeTooltipText = txt_landscapeTooltip.text;}

See the results below:

4 Passing parametersOf course static reports are boring (and useless) as you usually want to display data based on filtering for age, name...etc..

Our component allows you to pass in an arbitrary number of parameters from the client to the server which then will be used

to query against the database.

4.1 Adding parameters within iReportLet‘s start with an example: the report we previously used should match a filter criteria, filtering for the ID (sth. like SELECT *

from items where ID > 30). Of course this is a pretty simple query but it‘s enough to demonstrate how to work with

parameters - and which/how many parameters you pass into you report query is completely up to you.

Things start as usual within iReport, add a new paramter to your report within the design view:


Next, select the paramter and adapt the parameter properties in the right hand property editor, as ID is an Integer value the

parameter will be type Integer as well, name of the filter is idFilter.

Finally the report query needs to be adapted, open the query editor and adapt the query as following:

The query should be something like this:

Select * from item where itemId > $P{idFilter}

You see, the newly added parameter is used within the report query, switch to the preview mode and iReport will prompt for

a paramter value in order to test the query.


4.2 Passing paramters to the Flex componentOk, the .jasper report now contains the information a paramtere called idFilter will be passed in. If you try to open the report

within our report component openeing will fail gracefully since the required parameter is not passed in. So how to use the

component in order to pass in parameters?

In the client part of the application we have created a special datatype enabling you to pass exactly these filter parameters to

the server. The problem: we somehow need to determine the datatype as „2345“ either could be an Integer, Float or String

value. That‘s the reason the datatype provides adding methods for any datatype, let‘s have a look into the code to make

things clearer:

Adding an Integer parameter which matches ireport parameter called „idFilter“:

// filter array - put your filters into this arrayvar filters:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(); // create key value pair matching exactly the JasperReport filter// property ("idFilter")// Integer filtervar kv1:KeyValuePair = new KeyValuePair();kv1.addIntegerPair("idFilter",(int)(txt_filterId.text));filters.addItem(kv1);

// apply filter to component (report will reoload immediately)reportComponent.reportfilters = filters;

Adding a String parameter:

// create a 2nd filter// property ("descriptionFilter")// String filtervar kv2:KeyValuePair = new KeyValuePair();kv2.addStringPair("descriptionFilter",txt_filterDescription.text);filters.addItem(kv2);

Adding a date parameter:

// create a 3rd/4th filter// property ("nextDeliveryFilterMin")/("nextDeliveryFilterMax")// Date filtervar kv3:KeyValuePair = new KeyValuePair();kv3.addDatePair("nextDeliveryFilterMin",dat_min.selectedDate);filters.addItem(kv3);

Adding Float parameter (datatype Number will always be translated to Java Float):

// create a 5th filter// property ("quantityFilter")// Float filtervar kv5:KeyValuePair = new KeyValuePair();


kv5.addNumberPair("quantityFilter",new Number(txt_filterQuantity.text));filters.addItem(kv5);

The filters are passed to the report and used for report generation. The corresponding JasperReport query could look like

this:

Select * from item where itemId > $P{idFilter} and itemDescription LIKE $P{descriptionFilter} and (nextDelivery

between $P{nextDeliveryFilterMin} and $P{nextDeliveryFilterMax}) and itemQuantity > $P{quantityFilter}

And the parameters are passed in via Flex frontend. Being honestly this seems to be little bit complex, but we suggest:

simply start with a query containing single String filter and extend this example, as once understood passing filters is really

easy and one of the most powerful features of mireport!

Take care: all filter parameters will be passed to the servlet via URL - which means to you that special attention to special

characters! For example if you want to pass the „%“ sign (often used in LIKE query filter parameters) to your report you have

to pass „%25“ instead of using „%“ only. To make things easier we just dropped a table below containing frequently used

special characeters.


5 Advanced topics

5.1 Serverside file generationAs you might have noticed, JapserReport generates a physical file which needs to be placed somewhere on your server. We

configured JasperReport to put this file in your report directory, we add a unique ID in order to make sure several reports can

be used by several users.

So the tricky point/question is: how to get rid of these files as the user usually requires these files only one time, The answer:

we have implemented a pretty tricky file handling, for any file which is generated during a session (session in terms of one

client being connected to the server) we put a little hint to the session. If the session terminates (server timeout, client

inactivity) we read this information and start deleting the corresponding files. The only exception where the files might reside

within the directory: you shut down the server as we have no chance to gather this information in this case. If this should

happen you might have to clean the report directory manually.

You could also write a batch job checkking any 24 hours for .pdf/.rtf/.xls files older than 24 hours and remove these...but we

thought the session way is much easier for you;

6 Known IssuesThere is a serious issues which occurs when using mireport with IE 7: the report is displayed once, as soon as the user

clicks somewhere outside the report area the report disappears.

This is a focus management problem which occurs when using the iFrame component, but there is a workaround in order to

get rid of this begaviour:

In your project (where you want to integrate the mireport component), open the index.template.html file, the file can be found

within the html-template folder. Add the following snippet to one of the JavaScript sections starting with the <script> tag:

function setBrowserFocus(){document.getElementById('${application}').focus();}

The full script passage now should look like this (see red entry):

<script type="text/javascript">  var swfVersionStr = "${version_major}.${version_minor}.${version_revision}";  var xiSwfUrlStr = "${expressInstallSwf}"; var flashvars = {}; var params = {}; params.quality = "high"; params.bgcolor = "${bgcolor}"; params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain"; params.allowfullscreen = "true"; var attributes = {}; attributes.id = "${application}";mireport Developers Guide 29

attributes.name = "${application}"; attributes.align = "middle"; swfobject.embedSWF( "${swf}.swf", "flashContent", "${width}", "${height}", swfVersionStr, xiSwfUrlStr, flashvars, params, attributes);  swfobject.createCSS("#flashContent", "display:block;text-align:left;"); function

setBrowserFocus(){document.getElementById('${application}').focus();} </script>

Last but not least you have to call this newly added method after your application has finished loading, for example triggered

by a creationComplete Event:

creationComplete="{ExternalInterface.call('setBrowserFocus');}"

Following these steps the IE issue will be resolved. Unfortunately we can not embed this routine to our component,

otherwise we are stealing the focus from your application...

Documents

Developer Guide Jasper