BIRT Milestone 5 New and Notable

The New and Notable for milestone 5 is now available. This milestone contains many improvements to the Charting Package and the example Web Viewer. Additionally PostScript output is now supported.

As part of compiling the new features, I designed a report that would make use of the script tag within a Text element. This report executes every 10 seconds and alters what is rendered based on some check boxes within the report.

Each check box is built similar to the following code implemented in a Text element.


<form name="cbform">
<input type="checkbox" name="mycheckbox" <VALUE-OF>if( params["hideOfficeCodeLabel"].value){
"checked";
}else{
"";
}</VALUE-OF>>Hide Office Code</input>
</form>


The check box is linked to a report parameter, which in turn is tied to the visibility property of a column in the report.



The report contains a script function called reloadPage, which builds a new
URL based on the check boxes and reruns the report every ten seconds. This function was created in the first Text element of the report.

<form name="input" onSubmit="return reloadPage();">

<script type="text/javascript">


function reloadPage() {
var temp = new String(location.href);
var targetURL = new String();
var altchart = "1";

if( temp.indexOf("&altchart=1") != -1){
altchart = "2";
}else{
altchart = "1";
}
if(temp.indexOf("__overwrite=") != -1 ){
targetURL = temp.substring(0, temp.indexOf("&__overwrite") -1);
}else{
targetURL = temp;
}

targetURL += "&__overwrite=true";
targetURL += "&hideOfficeCodeLabel=" + document.cbform.mycheckbox.checked;
targetURL += "&hideCityLabel=" + document.cbform2.mycheckbox.checked;
targetURL += "&hideStateLabel=" + document.cbform3.mycheckbox.checked;
targetURL += "&hideCountryLabel=" + document.cbform4.mycheckbox.checked;
targetURL += "&altchart=" + altchart;



location.replace(targetURL);

return false;
}
timer=setTimeout('reloadPage()', 10000);
</script>

</form>


Finally a chart was added to the report which displays Product Line or Product details based on the altchart parameter set in the reload script. This was accomplished by using the DE API within the beforeFactory script to swap the chart data set as shown below.

graph = reportContext.getReportRunnable().designHandle.getDesignHandle().findElement("Chart1");
var request = reportContext.getHttpServletRequest();
altchart=2;
if( request.getParameter("altchart")){
altchart = request.getParameter("altchart").toString();
}
if( altchart == "2" ){
graph.setProperty( "dataSet", "graph2" );
}else{
graph.setProperty( "dataSet", "graph1" );

}


This report can be downloaded here.