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Version: 7.0

Brief: reports

The print view​

A report is a template that a document is built from by substituting data into it. A form's print view consists of a set of reports, each given its own set of the form's object groups; how the groups are split between reports and how the SUBREPORT option on a group makes it a separate report — a subreport — is described in building the report hierarchy.

What happens to the document is chosen by the options of the PRINT operator, which come in two forms. MESSAGE shows the form to the user as a message: the properties of the root group become its header, and the table under it comes from the FIRST child group — a form with no child group gives an empty table, and every child group after the first is left out. The other form is the interactive one: previewMode is either PREVIEW, the default, where the report is shown to the user, or NOPREVIEW, where it goes straight to the printer (TO <expression> picks the printer), while a format — PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, HTML, RTF — together with TO <property> writes the document into a file on the server. SHEET and PASSWORD are available for XLS and XLSX.

FORM printOrder
    OBJECTS o = Order
    PROPERTIES(o) date, nameCustomer

    OBJECTS d = OrderDetail SUBREPORT
    PROPERTIES(d) nameSku, quantity
    FILTERS order(d) = o
;

print (Order o) { PRINT printOrder OBJECTS o = o DOCX TO orderFile; }

Report design​

The report design is how a report is laid out in the document. A report is described by a template — a .jrxml file of the JasperReports technology that the platform looks up in the server classpath by a name derived from the form's canonical name; the fields of the template are the form's properties, and their names and types match. The exact naming and what a wrong name costs are in Rules: reports.

A report need not have a template of its own: if at least one is not found, the platform builds an automatic design from the form structure. A template can also be set explicitly, by a property holding either a file name or the template file itself: the REPORT block of the FORM statement for the top report, REPORTS (the synonym REPORTFILES) for the listed object groups, and the expression after SUBREPORT in an object block for that group.