Exporting overview

Exporting reports is done using a series of classes that implement the net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRExporter interface. This interface contains, among others, the following two methods:

• public void setParameter(JRExporterParameter parameter,java. lang.Object value)

• public void exportReport()

The setParameter() method is used to set the parameters needed to export the report. In most cases, two parameters need to be set: the name of the output file or output stream used to output the exported report and the JasperPrint object containing the native report. We would set the output file any time we are sure we want to save the exported report to the disk. We would set the output stream parameter to send the exported report through the network or when we are not sure if we want to save the exported report to the disk or stream it through the network. As an output stream can be easily saved to the disk or streamed through the network, the decision can be made at the runtime...