As I understand, you need to integrate your application with the BIRT Runtime Viewer so that you can generate reports from within your application, but powered by BIRT Viewer in the backend. Here are the steps
Pre-Requisites -
I've use the src for 4.2.2 from here
I've extracted it here, and call it BIRT_VIEWER_HOME
org.eclipse.birt-BIRT_4_2_2_RC2_201301291123\viewer\org.eclipse.birt.report.viewer\
1) Copy all the contents of the web.xml from your BIRT viewer to your application's web.xml.
Birt Viewer's web.xml can be spotted here - BIRT_VIEWER_HOME\birt\WEB-INF
2) Copy webcontent folder present under BIRT_VIEWER_HOME\birt\ and put it in your application's root folder. So when deployed in tomcat, it will create a directory structure
\webapps\yourapplication\webcontent
3) Create a jsp page, with an iframe inside. Eg. report.jsp which has this content
<iframe src="" id="birtViewer" name="birtViewer" frameborder="0"
scrolling="no" class="reportframe"
style="height:600px;margin:0px;padding:0px;" />
Notice that I've left the src as empty so that initially, the iframe will not load anything
3) Based on some click or any other criteria, set the src of this iframe with this URL
report=reports/">http://localdomain:port/yourapplication/frameset?_report=reports/&__format=pdf
eg. My implementation using JQuery.
$(document).ready(function(){
var url;
if(someCondition)
{
url = "frameset?__report=reports/testreport.rptdesign&__format=pdf";
}
else
{
url = "dummyPage.jsp";
}
$("#birtViewer").attr('src',url);//setting the src for iframe
})
4) This will load the iframe with the BIRT parameters for this report.
5) You can fill in all the params and hit the "OK" button. The report will be generated in this iframe.
I'll rather let you take care of the security aspects. A simple security measure is to use tomcat's Filter mechanism to check for the BIRT Viewer URL and see if it is accessed by someone who is authenticated or has a session.
UPDATE:
If you want a central BIRT execution point, create a batch file, call that from Java passing the parameters and then get the report from the generated location. This way it is useful via command prompt and from Java/Tomcat. Steps below
Create a batch file, say report.bat and add this code there. Place
all the BIRT jars in classpath. I will omit setting the value of
variables for brevity
%JAVACMD% -Dlog4j.configuration="file:%APP_HOME%/conf/log4j.properties"
-cp "%CP%" -Djava.util.logging.config.file=%APP_HOME%/conf/birtlogger.properties
org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api.ReportRunner %p1% %p2% %p3% %p4% %p5%
- %APP_HOME%/reports is where I put the designs. You can pass it
dynamically though.
- p1 through p5 are my 5 parameters that I pass to
the Report Runner. You can pass any number of parameters though.
Run the report by calling this from your Java/Tomcat. Refer @Adam's answer.
report.bat -f pdf -p "p1=paramValue1" -p "p2=paramValue2" -p
"p3=paramValue3" -p "p4=paramValue4" -p "p5=paramValue5" -o
%APP_HOME%\myreportfolder\NameofMyReport.pdf %APP_HOME%\NameofMyReport.rptdesign
You will get the report NameofMyReport.pdf generated in %APP_HOME%\myreportfolder. Point your java code to get it loaded from there.
Refer this link if you want a detailed explanation.
