Building reports with Java?

Ok so after much head scratching and frustration I finally figured it out. There are no definitive tutorials on how to use iReport with a JavaBean datasource so I'll lay out what I did here to help other developers who might be looking!

First off I installed the iReport plugin for Netbeans - this didn't work correctly initially (no preview was visible) so a re-install of the java 7 RE and SDK sorted it.

From my understanding a JavaBean is simply a collection of objects that you call from a library or plugin like iReport. First create a "bean" class (just a normal java class) with member variables you want visible in your report and getter/setter methods for each. The create a "factory" class (again name it anything) and have a static method in it that returns a collection:

public static Collection getStudentList()
     {
         Vector students = new Vector();
         try
         {
             Student student = new Student();
             student.setRoll_no("101");
             student.setName("Steve");
             student.setFathers_name("Jack");
             student.setStudying_in("I-A");
             students.add(student);
             student = new Student();
             student.setRoll_no("102");
             student.setName("Mark");
             student.setFathers_name("Henry");
             student.setStudying_in("I-A");
             students.add(student);
         }
         catch(Exception ex)
         {
             System.out.println(ex);
         }
         return students;
     }

With Student being the "bean" class in this example. In Netbeans, go to Preferences>iReport>Classpath and set the class path to the .class files (of the code above) in your project or compile them into jars.

Then set a new javabeans data source in Netbeans. Add a title and for the factory class, set your package name where the collection lies. i.e. com.myexample.Collection, select Collection of JavaBeans button, and add the name of the static method in it i.e. getStudentList. Test it and it should work.

Now design a new report in iReport and click on the Report Query button. Type in the name of the "bean" class you created i.e. package.Student, read attributes and then you should see the variables you had added in your bean class. Add whatever fields you want and click ok. The variables are now available for you to drag into the PDF from "Fields" section of the Report Inspector.

Hope that helps someone else! Now I just need to figure out how to call a method in the PDF instead of variables.