I want to know pros and cons of JasperReports and iText/iTextpdf. Till now, I have been working on JasperReports but now thinking about shifting on iText. Should I change to iText or continue with JasperReports?
I know that for dynamic reports, we should use iText and for reports with static structure, we can use JasperReports and then create pdfs from them. But I still want to know more about both of these.
Jasper is a PDF library using iText for the generation of its PDFs. iText is a library for creating and manipulating PDFs.
If your purpose is to generate reports, I would stick to Jasper. However, if you feel like you are going to generate more PDFs that aren't reports, you could take a look at the iText library.
iText has an amazing book published by Manning called iText in Action 2nd Edition, which covers iText5 if you want to learn more about it. Also check out the official website of iText at itextpdf.com
JasperReports is a Business Intelligence / Reporting tool that uses an old iText version to create reports. It is distributed by
JasperSoft / TIBCO. JasperReports only uses a limited part of the
complete iText functionality. Creating PDF is just one of many
features of JasperReports, and JasperSoft uses iText to implement that
feature.
iText is a library that can be used by developers to enhance their web
and other applications with PDF functionality: create PDF, fill out
PDF forms, examine and manipulate existing PDFs.
Source:
http://developers.itextpdf.com/question/what-difference-between-itext-jasperreports-and-adobe-lc
https://stackoverflow.com/a/15537779/1793718
Related
How can we generate PDF/A-2 using BIRT?
You can't.
But you can use commercial software to post-process the PDF generated by BIRT.
Is there a way to sign electronically a PDF generated by JasperServer?
As we can see in the wiki:
http://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/pdf-output-digital-signing-not-implemented-jasperreports
JasperReports itself does not provide a direct way to sign digital
certificates in the PDF report output file nor implements such a
feature from iText which is the library used by JasperReports to
generate a PDF file.
We would need to customize the iText library (wich is the one used to export de documents).
Using iText api can I achieve the following?
We have a requirement of generating pdf documents with-
Header (static data) repeated in all pages. Same data should be filled or repeated in all pages.
Product Details section (grows data dynamically). This section is kind of table, but values are formed from multiple hibernate entity fields.
Footer repeats in all pages (hard-coded footer)
If this is achievable with iText api, we are planning to buy commercial licence.
With the core iText, you can fill out an XFA form by injecting XML. The functionality you describe requires that you create a dynamic XFA form first (e.g. using Adobe LiveCycle Designer). The result will be a filled out XFA form (XML wrapped in PDF).
If you want to flatten that dynamic PDF (for instance because you want to turn it into a PDF/A, PDF/UA, ordinary PDF document), you need XFA Worker. This will convert the XML stream to PDF syntax (no more XML inside the PDF, except for the XMP data, or, if you need to comply with the ZUGFeRD standard: an XML attachment).
iText is licensed under the AGPL, that means that you can use it for free under specific conditions. For instance: you may need to distribute all your own source code for free. XFA Worker is a closed source product, written on top of iText. You can download a trial version that will add "trial version" on top of all your flattened documents.
If you go for XFA, then your only options are Adobe LiveCycle ES or XFA Worker. I don't know of any other software that supports XFA flattening.
i'm still new in Jasper reports.i still confuse what the different preview report using excel preview and excel preview(using J ExcelApi) in iReports 2.0.2.Which is more common that people use?. is there any effect when we generate the report?. Can anybody tell me?
Jasperreports supports multiple export formats (xls, pdf, csv, etc...). After developing a report using iReport, you can generate a report in any of those export formats. The best way to view those reports is using an external appliction that you can map. For example, xls report is tied with Excel and pdf reports are tied with Adobe Reader. The new version of iReport supports generation of these reports using the application itself (preview). However, what happens in the background is the same whether you view it with external viewer or internaly using iReport "preview". Personaly, I prefer to use external viewer. The exported reports are cached in the compilation directory.
I have a Crystal Reports project that I am working on where I need to generate a label with UPC-A's. After doing a bit of research, I've found that Azalea Software offers a tool that is suppose to integrate barcode objects into your application.
I purchased the software from Azalea, followed all of their instructions and I can not get their software to work with my report. I don't want to speak ill of Azalea, because their support has been great, but is anyone aware of a legitimate alternative for UPC-A barcode creatioon from within Crystal Reports 2008?
I don't mind purchasing another 3rd party API, I just need to be able to generate dynamic UPC-A images from the UPC-A numbers that I need to encode stored within my database.
Further information-- this is a label document that is printed from a ClickOnce published application that uses the Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 runtime, and the Crystal Reports Document Viewer control to view and print these labels.
We use IDAutomation for our barcoding. Very easy to use when installed, you use it like a font on calculated barcode fields. We use it mainly for Code-39 and Code-128 barcodes; though looking at the site it can make UPC/EAN codes too. It also has a selection of sizes for each barcode, alongside the normal font resizing.
On our version you have to install the fonts on every client computer running the report locally; but only once on telnet servers etc.