iReport is a powerful visual tool for JasperReports to graphically design reports. It is much easier to generate JASPER code using the graphical features of iReport as compared to writing the JASPER code by hand.
In order to create reports using JasperReports, you will only need to download iReport from the iReport project website hosted at SourceForge.net ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ireport ).
As the JasperReports library comes bundled with iReport, you don't need to separately download and install JasperReports.
This recipe just shows you how to download, install, and run iReport.
- Visit the iReport project website at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ireport. The iReport project homepage at SourceForge.net will open.
- Click on the View all files button, and a list of all available versions of iReport will appear. I used version 3.6.0 of iReport, which is the latest at the time of writing these recipes. Therefore, expand iReport-3.6.0, by clicking on it. It will show all the files related to iReport-3.6.0. Download the file named
iReport-nb-3.6.0-windows-installer.exe. This is an executable file. - Double-click the Windows executable file. A setup wizard will run, which will show you the installation steps and ask you for the folder where you want to install iReport. Just provide the destination folder and the installation will finish.
- After the installation is finished, iReport will run and show a welcome window. Click on File and select New from the File menu. A New file dialog will appear containing several icons such as Report, Style, Chart Theme, and so on. Each icon represents a type of file you can create. The Report icon comes pre-selected, which means iReport allows you to create reports by default.
- Now your iReport is up and running and you are ready to try the recipes of this cookbook.
The five steps given above show you how to download and install iReport for Microsoft Windows. iReport also supports other operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris. The following is a short guideline to download and install iReport for these operating systems.
You can download iReport for Linux, Mac OS X, or Solaris by following the steps listed below:
- Visit the sourceforget.net website at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ireport. The iReport project homepage at SourceForge.net will open.
- Click the View all files button, to the right of the Download Now! button. A page will open containing the latest downloads for all operating systems in the Newest Files section of the download page. You will find that separate downloads of iReport are available for Linux and Solaris as
tar.gzfiles and for Mac OS X as DMG files. Download iReport for your operating system. - For Linux and Solaris, you just need to unzip the
iReport-nb-XX.tar.gzfiles to your required folder. If you are using Linux, open the Linux Terminal and type the following command in the terminal:tar -zxf iReport-nb-xx.tar.gzNote
Visit http://www.linuxhelp.net/newbies/#unzip to learn more about unzipping
tar.gzfiles.uncompress iReport-nb-xx.tar.gz - After you finish extracting the archive, run the
ireport.exefile from theiReport/binfolder.
If you need to download an older version of iReport, click on the View all files button to the right of the Download Now! button on the iReport project home page. A page containing a list of available versions will open. You will find the latest downloads for all operating systems in the Newest Files section and older versions in the All Files section of the download page.
Note that I have used iReport version 3.6.0 in this cookbook. iReport versions dated before 2008 are referred to as iReport classic, which might behave differently from the recipes of this cookbook.