Can a textField produce output in columns?

[wjones14]

Presently, we have a textField cell where the data is a long single String.  We generated the String before sending it to the report, by concatenating a list of Strings, each separated by a comma and a space.  See the last column in the attached file for an example.

 

We're wondering if it's possible to send a textField a List of Strings, and have Jasper format the list by columns?  It would be similar to how Microsoft Word allows you to format using "newsletter-style" columns.

 

 

Post Edited by wjones14 at 06/12/2009 15:51

[wjones14]

If Jasper cannot accept a List of Strings as input for a textField, can it display an HTML table in the cell?  This is a PDF report.

[wjones14]

We figured out a way to do this so I thought I would share the answer.  The report output looks like this:

 

col1	col2	col3	col4	col5
data	data	data	data	data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data data

 

 

So what we did was to have col1, col2, col3, and col4 be ordinary textField elements.  But col5 is a subreport.  In addition to the Fields declared for col1, col2, col3, and col4, we have col5 declared as a Field of class type JasperReport.  The main report's subreport properties are also Fields.  And the main report's DataSource is a JRMapCollectionDataSource, so each report row contains maps with the subreport's parameter map, it's data source, and the compiled subreport.  The subreport's data source is also a JRMapCollectionDataSource, created with a list of maps, each with key that matches the subreport textField expression name, and a value of the actual data.

 

The subreport is real simple.  It is simply a detail band containing a single textField.  The report properties have column count set to 5 and the printOutput property is horizontal.