Printing Alternate Colour Backgrounds On A Summary Only Report.

[gregory.west]

I have a report that is a summary only report.  This means the group footer lines are the only thing being printed.  The question comes up, how do I change the background colour for alternating groups.

Here is the solution I can up with:

Create a variable, in my case I used GROUP_PRINT Value Class Name:java.lang.Integer  Calculation is Sum.  Now here comes the magic, what you want to sum up are the number of first group detail records.  To do this I used the expression: ($V{Group1_COUNT}==1?1:0) which means when GROUP_COUNT = 1 return 1 for the sum, otherwise return 0.  Every group has to have one and only one first line.  The Initial Value Expression should be set to 0 (zero) Increment type is none, and Reset type is Report.

Now that will give you a variable GROUP_PRINT that will tell you the group number you are on.  From there create a frame in your group footer change the frames background colour to what you want and add the following to the Print When of the frame:($V{GROUP_PRINT} % 2) ==0.

There you go, group footers in alternating colour backgrounds.

Now for my harder question:   I have a clause in my footer for print when.  How do I tell if a footer was even printed for a particular group?

[gregory.west]

Does anyone have any thoughts, I am even interested in out of the box ideas.   Right now I have a report that is supposed to be blue band, white band, blue band etc....    What I get is White, Blue, Blue, White, White, White, Blue, White, Blue, Blue... Depending on which summary lines are being printed.   Is there a way I can count up the summary lines that have been printed?

 

Greg

[gregory.west]

Is there any way in Jasper Reports that I can tell / control in which order parameter fields are re-calculated?   This is a possible solution to the problem but I need a couple parameter fields to be recalculated in a very specific order.

Field1: Summary-Lines = Summer-lines + (Last-Group-ID != Current-Group-ID and Last-Group-Printed?1:0)

Field2: Last-Group-Printed = 'print when condition

Fiels3: Last-Group-ID = Current-Group-ID

The major trick here is these three fields MUST be recalculated in order,  Field1, then Field2, last Field3.    Is this possible?