Jasper Reports from XML Datasource : Rendering the Enterprise Hierarchical Data

Data is hierarchical by nature. Whether you model it with a relational database or a noSql database (it looks like nowadays anything non sql92+ compliant is simply noSQL and you do not need to talk about the big differences about graph, OO, XML and more) the fact is you need to report out of that data.

Your hierarchical data (did I say that any report will ultimately render hierarchical data?) can be rendered with the help of iReport at Design time and JasperReports at runtime. A combination of XML+XPATH and sub-reports will do the job for us.

Here is a showcase to illustrate how to build a report which parses a potentially big XML containing several companies to extract employees and their contacts. The source code can be downloaded from https://nestorurquiza.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/jasper-reports/xml-report/

The key here is to understand that you need a datasource per report and so to show hierarchical data you will need sub-reports. We will use bands which will result in rendering all nodes matching the xpath provided. Probably using tables for rendering tabular data is a better idea but for simple reports this should be enough.

1. Create an XML datasource pointing to the file (In our case companies.xml)
2. Check "Use the report XPath expression when filling the report" option Use as name the file for example "companies.xml"
3. Go to File|New|Report|Blank|Open this template and name the report something like "employee"|Next Finish
4. From the left pane remove all bands (right click|delete band) but the "title", "column header" and "detail" bands. Choose as title "Employees"
5. Click om the Report Query button (database with arrow icon) | Xpath as query language. On the right pane of the Report Query Window drill down until you find the node containing the fields to present, in this case "employee". Right click and select "Set record node (generate xpath)". The text "/companies/company/employees/employee" appears as a result and you can see the selected nodes are 2. Drag name and phone to the fields pane and click OK.
6. On the left pane (Report Inspector) the fields are now accessible. Drag and drop them in the details band. Two labels appear in the Column header band and two fields appear in the details band. Adjust the height of the two bands so they do not take more space than needed by a typical row
7. Click on Preview and the two employees will show up. Now let us jump into the subreport to show the contacts below each employee
8. Create a new report as explained before but name it "employee_contacts". Use as title "Contacts". Use as Datasource root the "contact" node (note the xpath is now /companies/company/employees/employee/contacts/contact) and drag and drop the name and phone for that node. Use as Title "Contacts".
9. Hit Preview and note we have a problem, we are not filtering by a specific employee name. Let's go back to the Report Query and change the xpath to "/companies/company/employees/employee[@name='$P{employee_name}']/contacts/contact"
10. In Report Inspector pane create a Parameter called "employee_name". Hit Preview and you will be prompted for an employee name. Pick John or Paul to get content back.
11. Go back to the "employee" report and expand the details band so there is space for the "employee_contacts" subreport.
12. Drag and drop the Subreport component from the Palette pane into the details band. Select "Use existing subreport" and point to "employee_contacts.jasper", click next to accept "Use the same connection used to fill the master report". Click next. For the parameter expression pick from the dropdown "name field" (F${name}) which is the employee name. Use option for absolute path and click Finish.
13. Clicking preview at this point at least in version 4.1.2 will end in the below error, reason why we migrated to 4.1.7:

    Error filling print... null java.lang.NullPointerException     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRPrintBand.addOffsetElements(JRPrintBand.java:101)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFillElementContainer.addSubElements(JRFillElementContainer.java:623)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFillElementContainer.fillElements(JRFillElementContainer.java:600)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFillBand.fill(JRFillBand.java:406)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFillBand.fill(JRFillBand.java:352)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.fillColumnBand(JRVerticalFiller.java:2023)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.fillDetail(JRVerticalFiller.java:755)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.fillReportStart(JRVerticalFiller.java:265)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.fillReport(JRVerticalFiller.java:128)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRBaseFiller.fill(JRBaseFiller.java:836)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFiller.fillReport(JRFiller.java:118)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperFillManager.fillReport(JasperFillManager.java:435)     at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperFillManager.fillReport(JasperFillManager.java:271)     at com.jaspersoft.ireport.designer.compiler.IReportCompiler.run(IReportCompiler.java:991)     at org.openide.util.RequestProcessor$Task.run(RequestProcessor.java:572)     at org.openide.util.RequestProcessor$Processor.run(RequestProcessor.java:997) Print not filled. Try to use an EmptyDataSource...

14. open the XML and add to subreport node below the declaration for report element node:

    <subreportParameter name="XML_DATA_DOCUMENT">
     <subreportParameterExpression>$P{XML_DATA_DOCUMENT}</subreportParameterExpression>
    

15. Remove the absolute path and use just relative path. You can also remove the below node:

    <connectionExpression><![CDATA[$P{REPORT_CONNECTION}]]></connectionExpression>
    

16. Go back to the Designer Editor and make sure it shows up as parameter. I have found sometimes it does not in which case closing and opening the properties editor or saving xml and switching to Designer or just closing and opening the report will restore it. For this subreport we have two parameters as the jrxml shows.
17. Here are a couple of screenshots of how it looks locally for me:
18. To invoke the report from java using the JasperReports library you go like

    Document document = JRXmlUtils.parse(xmlFile);               reportParameters.put(JRXPathQueryExecuterFactory.PARAMETER_XML_DATA_DOCUMENT, document);
    jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperFilePath, reportParameters);
    

The version on SVN shows a header just to demonstrate how it correctly shows the page numbers and total pages in the report header even when the subreport is the one printing full pages. The trick here is that you use the same variable for current page number and for total pages but for the latter the field has an attribute (evaluationTime="Report") setting that will cause the Jasper Engine to evaluate when the whole report has been pre-rendered, at that moment Jasper knows how many total pages will be in the final report.