Jasper reports: positioning element on bottom of the page - jasper-reports

Question

I wonder if it's possible to position dynamically growing (table) element to the bottom of the page? My table element is on detail band, just above the page footer band.
Basically in my case the position of the topmost row of the table would be dynamically changing all the time based on the amount of rows in the table. But I'm not sure if creating this kind of presentation is even possible with Jasper where the table would be basically "growing" from bottom to top where the last row of the table would be basically fixed to the bottom of the page, just above page footer. There would be no problem if the position of the table's topmost row would be always fixed and table would "grow normally" from the fixed top position towards the bottom of the page...
I tried setting the table's position type property to Fix relative to bottom, but after that the whole table disappeared completely. This was the only thing I was able to think of so far to solve my issue.

Answer 1

Maybe the easiest way to achieve this is to put your table in a <groupFooter> with footerPosition="StackAtBottom"
The correct way to group depends on your datasource, but let assume you have just one table creating a dummy group.
Example of dummy group with table StackAtBottom of page
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jasperReport xmlns="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/xsd/jasperreport.xsd" name="Example2" pageWidth="595" pageHeight="842" columnWidth="555" leftMargin="20" rightMargin="20" topMargin="20" bottomMargin="20" uuid="ca579c38-1e4f-4993-a020-efcea9d1096e">
<style name="table"><box><pen lineWidth="1.0" lineColor="#000000"/></box></style>
<style name="table_TD" mode="Opaque" backcolor="#FFFFFF"><box><pen lineWidth="0.5" lineColor="#000000"/></box></style>
<subDataset name="Table" uuid="982be61b-ae46-4404-a9a0-30ba13e8c414">
<queryString language="xPath">
<![CDATA[/report/table/entry]]>
</queryString>
<field name="name" class="java.lang.String">
<fieldDescription><![CDATA[name]]></fieldDescription>
</field>
<field name="class" class="java.lang.String">
<fieldDescription><![CDATA[class]]></fieldDescription>
</field>
</subDataset>
<queryString language="xPath">
<![CDATA[/report]]>
</queryString>
<group name="dummy" footerPosition="StackAtBottom">
<groupFooter>
<band height="29">
<componentElement>
<reportElement key="table" style="table" x="0" y="0" width="360" height="20" uuid="53ea5a0e-1218-4150-ab5a-5f947e73b284"/>
<jr:table xmlns:jr="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports/components" xsi:schemaLocation="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports/components http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/xsd/components.xsd">
<datasetRun subDataset="Table" uuid="64092841-9993-4ccd-89b4-84a546c719cf">
<dataSourceExpression><![CDATA[((net.sf.jasperreports.engine.data.JRXmlDataSource)$P{REPORT_DATA_SOURCE}).subDataSource("report/table/entry")]]></dataSourceExpression>
</datasetRun>
<jr:column width="90" uuid="4f5b1813-a9cc-4f83-9bdb-b0d8c4299133">
<jr:detailCell style="table_TD" height="20">
<textField>
<reportElement x="0" y="0" width="90" height="20" uuid="f1a97e19-e23d-40b6-ad95-10614f516db7"/>
<textFieldExpression><![CDATA[$F{class}]]></textFieldExpression>
</textField>
</jr:detailCell>
</jr:column>
<jr:column width="90" uuid="98cfbe63-f865-419c-ad8f-d8af2ed706ba">
<jr:detailCell style="table_TD" height="20">
<textField>
<reportElement x="0" y="0" width="90" height="20" uuid="0480f047-02ba-4ec4-b12a-ef56a3cbfee9"/>
<textFieldExpression><![CDATA[$F{name}]]></textFieldExpression>
</textField>
</jr:detailCell>
</jr:column>
</jr:table>
</componentElement>
</band>
</groupFooter>
</group>
<detail>
<band height="17" splitType="Stretch"/>
</detail>
</jasperReport>
Result