Crystal Reports for Eclipse
Getting Started Guide
Table of Contents
1 Creating a Crystal Reports Web Application ... 2
2 Designing a Report off the Xtreme Embedded Derby Database... 11
3 Running a Crystal Reports Web Application... 20
4 Creating a New Viewer Page ... 22
5 Snippets ... 25
Crystal Reports for Eclipse
Getting Started Guide
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1
Creating a Crystal Reports Web Application
Crystal Reports for Eclipse includes many tools to assist developers with the building of applications that require a powerful and versatile presentation layer. One such tool is the Crystal Reports Web Application wizard which will walk users through the creation of a web application which will contain Crystal Reports. This tutorial will explain the steps a user will follow to complete this process
1) Select “File” | “New” | “Project…”
2) Expand the “Crystal Reports” folder and select “Crystal Reports Web Project”.
3) Click “Next”.
4) Give the project a name in the “Name:” field.
5) Make sure Tomcat is configured with a path to the Java SDK. You should only have to do this once in your workspace:
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a. Go to “Target runtime:”, and click “New…”.
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c. Specify the “Tomcat installation directory:”, e.g. “C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat”.
d. Click “Installed JREs…”. e. Click “Add…”
f. For “JRE name”, specify “JDK 1.4.2”.
g. For “JRE home directory”, specify your Java SDK directory, e.g. “C:\j2sdk1.4.2_08”.
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h. Click OK.
i. Select “JDK 1.4.2” in the “Installed JREs” list. j. Click OK.
k. Under the “JRE” field in the “New Server Runtime” dialog, select “JDK 1.4.2”.
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l. Click “Finish”. 6) Click “Next >”.
7) The next page of the wizard presents the user with the option select which “facets” they wish to add to the application. A facet defines which runtime
environments will be added to the application. By default the Crystal Reports Java Reporting Component will be selected
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8) Click “Next >”.
9) Users can modify the Context Root for their application on this next page of the wizard. For this demo we will keep the default settings. Click “Next >”.
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10) This next dialog allows users to choose whether they wish to add our sample database and reports as well as a new blank report to their web application
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11) Click “Finish” to create your project.
12) When asked to accept the Sun license agreement to cache
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13) Click “Yes” to open the J2EE perspective.
The J2EE Perspective will contain a Project Explorer which allows the user to navigate the different projects contained in their workspace. When the user expands the Dynamic Web Project heading in the Project Explorer they should notice their newly created web
application. This web application will contain all of the required files for generating reports at runtime. As well, if users opted to add the sample reports and database they will notice a folder titled “Samples” within the Web Content folder containing the 3 sample reports. Finally, if the user opted to add a new Blank Crystal Report file to the project they should notice 2 files within the root of the Web Content folder. One will be titled Crystal Report1.rpt which is the report file, and the other will be titled
CrystalReport1-viewer.jsp which is a Java Server Page containing the required code to view the new report over the web.
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2
Designing a Report off the Xtreme Embedded Derby
Database
This release of Crystal Reports for Eclipse includes a sample database built using
Apache’s open source Derby Database. This is added to new Crystal Reports Web Projects by default to allow users to get up and running in no time. For other data sources Crystal Reports for Eclipse includes a Deployment Assistance feature which will assist developers by attempting to ensure that the required database drivers are present at runtime. Follow the steps below to create a new report off of our Xtreme Sample Database
1) After the Crystal Reports Web Project has been created, you should notice that a file titled CrystalReports1.rpt has been added to the Web Content folder of the newly created Web Project. Double-clicking this file will open it up in the Crystal Reports editor. This action should also change the user’s Eclipse Perspective to be “Crystal Reports”
2) Go to the “Database Explorer”
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4) This action will launch the Database Explorer wizard. Expand the Derby entry in the Database Manager and select the 10.1 option
5) For the Database location enter classpath:/Xtreme .This will allow the engine to look for the Derby database within a JAR file located in the CLASSPATH.
6) Set the information in the dialog to the following. For the “Class location”, select both the derby.jar and Xtreme.jar from your
“.\eclipse\plugins\com.businessobjects.crystalreports.samples_1.0.0.vX XX\SampleDatabases” directory:
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7) The JDBC driver class and Connection URL should be automatically populated. 8) Click “Test Connection” to ensure that you can connect to the database 9) Click “Next”, and then click “Finish”.
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10) From the Database Explorer, expand “Xtreme” / “Schemas” / “APP” / “Tables” to see the available tables
11) Drag the “CUSTOMER” and “ORDERS” tables onto the report. Alternatively, you can right-click a table and select the option “Add to New Report” or “Add to Current Report”
12) This will add the CUSTOMER and ORDERS table to the Data pane of the Crystal Reports editor. Create a relationship between the two tables by dragging the CUSTOMER_ID field from the CUSTOMER table and dropping it on the
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13) In the report designer, switch back to the “Layout” tab to begin designing the report
14) From the Field Explorer, right-click on the COUNTRY field in the CUSTOMER table and select the option to “Group on Field”. This will group all of the data report based on Country
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15) Repeat this same step to add a group based on the CUSTOMER_NAME field from the CUSTOMER table. You will notice that Crystal Reports includes pre-existing logic to decrease the group-level font size as you add more groups. Obviously the report designer will be able to format these fields as they deem necessary. Your report should now look similar to the layout below:
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16) Now select ORDER_ID, ORDER_AMOUNT and ORDER_DATE from the ORDERS table. Drag the multiple selection and drop in the Body section of the report. This will add the 3 data fields to the Body section as well as 3 data labels to the Page Header section
17) Right-click on the ORDERS.ORDER_AMOUNT field and select the “Summarize” option
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Getting Started Guide
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18) This will add a Summary field to the Group1 Footer section.
19) Add some minimal report formatting to adjust the section heights. You can do this via the Properties view of each section by changing the Height property.
Alternatively, you can drag the height indicator of the section to reduce or increase the size of the height.
20) Additionally add some text formatting to highlight Group Headings and Total amounts
21) Click on the “Preview” tab to preview the report. Your report should look similar to the following:
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This guide is intended to be an introduction to the product. It is recommended that the user continues to experiment with the available properties and Report Objects to create the required level of formatting. Additional guides exploring advanced report
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design techniques will be made available on Business Objects’ Eclipse Zone (
http://diamond.businessobjects.com/eclipse
)3
Running a Crystal Reports Web Application
Running a report in a web application is a very simple process within Crystal Reports for Eclipse. By default, the blank report which is added to the Crystal Reports Web Project has an accompanying JSP which will serve up the report viewer at runtime. This file will be named CrystalReport1-viewer.jsp and should be found in the root of the Web Content folder.
1) In the Project Explorer, right-click on “CrystalReport1-viewer.jsp”. 2) Select “Run As” | “Run on Server”.
3) Select “Apache” / “Tomcat v5.0 Server” and click “Next”.
4) Make sure “CrystalReportsForEclipse” (or whatever you named your project) is listed under “Configured projects:”, and click “Finish”.
5) This will launch CrystalReport1-viewer.jsp in an Internet browser window embedded in the IDE (note: if your Tomcat server was configured to use a JRE instead of a JDK you may experience an error at this point as Tomcat will not be able to compile the JSP):
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4
Creating a New Viewer Page
Creating a new Viewer JSP page off existing reports is just as easy as using the default viewer page which was created in Step 5. In this demo we will build a Crystal Reports viewer JSP page to show the Sample Reports included with this release of Crystal Reports for Eclipse
1) Expand the Web Content\Sample Reports folder in the Navigator or Project Explorer view.
2) Right-click on “Consolidated Balance Sheet.rpt” and select the “Crystal Reports”->”Create Viewer JSP” option
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3) This action will launch a wizard which will provide the Developer with a number of options. Crystal Reports for Eclipse includes a feature which will auto-generate stub code to assist developers with coding common tasks (e.g. authenticating against the database, passing in parameter values, exporting, etc.). There are additional tutorials available on the Crystal Reports for Eclipse developer zone which go into this feature in more detail. For the sake of this demo we will select the default option: “Insert standard Tag Lib code”
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4) Clicking “OK” on this wizard will add a new file to the same folder as the report called “Consolidated Balance Sheet-viewer.jsp”
5) In the Project Explorer, right-click on “Consolidated Balance Sheet-viewer.jsp”. 6) Select “Run As” | “Run on Server”.
7) Select “Apache” / “Tomcat v5.0 Server” and click “Next”.
8) Make sure “CrystalReportsForEclipse” (or whatever you named your project) is listed under “Configured projects:”, and click “Finish”.
9) This will launch “Consolidated Balance Sheet-viewer.jsp” in an Internet browser window embedded in the IDE.
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5
Snippets
Often developers will want to have more control over the final outcome of their presentation layer. As mentioned in the previous section Crystal Reports for Eclipse provides developers with the “Viewer JSP Wizard” to auto-generate custom code to assist them with the development of applications using our Java APIs. Additionally, this release also provides a number of code snippets which will allow users to drag-and-drop code into their JSP page. These snippets provide the developer with more control over where the code snippet will be generated. The following snippets are provided in this release of Crystal Reports for Eclipse:
1. Crystal Reports Viewer Tag – this will insert the required Crystal Reports Viewer Tag Library code. The only parameter required by this snippet is the name of the report file the viewer should be bound to
2. Open and View Report – This will open the report using the Java Reporting Component API and view it using the Viewer API.
3. Open Report – This will open the report and create a ReportSource object. This snippet should be used in conjunction with one of the Viewer or Export snippets 4. View Report – This snippet will add the required Viewer API calls to a page. It
will require a ReportSource object which can be returned from the “Open Report” snippet
5. View Report and Set Database Logon - This snippet will add the required Viewer API calls as well as the required calls to authenticate against the database add runtime. It will require a ReportSource object which can be returned from the “Open Report” snippet
6. Export Report to PDF - This snippet will add the required exporting calls to a page. It will require a ReportSource object which can be returned from the “Open Report” snippet
7. Export Report to RPT - This snippet will add the required exporting calls to a page. It will require a ReportSource object which can be returned from the “Open Report” snippet
To access the snippets follow these steps
1) Switch to the J2EE perspective. If it is not open then select it under Window->Open Perspective->Other
2) A Snippets view will be added to the bottom-center portion of the IDE 3) Expand the Crystal Reports heading
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4) Create a new JSP page (e.g. test.jsp) by right-clicking on the Web Content folder of the Crystal Reports Web Project and selecting New->JSP
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5) Drag-and-drop the “Open and View Report” snippet from the Snippets view to the JSP page (between the <BODY> tags)
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7) Click “Insert”. This will insert the code snippet into the source of the JSP page. 8) Test the new JSP by right-clicking on it and selecting the “Run On Server” option.
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Help
Crystal Reports for Eclipse contains the following Help Guides installed in the Eclipse Help System:
1. Crystal Reports for Eclipse Designer Guide – this help guide provides
additional information and assistance with using the Crystal Reports editor, such as built-in formula functions, adding database connections and modifying report object property values
2. Crystal Reports for Eclipse Developer Guide – this help guide provides additional developer resources, such as code snippets, walk-throughs and JavaDocs.
