How to create Ad Hoc Template with page limits

Scenario:

You want to have some ad hoc reports to have a strict page limit, for example no more than 100 pages total. Other ad hoc reports don't need to be limited like this or should have different limit than set for the server globally. How to achieve this?

Solution:

For this we can use the Max Page Governor configuration property:

http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/config.reference.html#net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages

You can enable the governor globally on the server in {JRS WAR}/WEB-INF/classes/jasperreports.properties by appending the properties:

net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages.enabled=true

net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages={arbitrary number}

This will enable the limit for all reports on the server. Now you can create an ad hoc template with the following properties added in the template JRXML:

<property name="net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages" value="{different number than in the config}"/>

And deploy the JRXML to ad hoc templates folder to create a new template. The ad hoc reports will need to be re-saved using this template for it to take effect. This will set a new hard limit for the number you've set for these reports.

You can also not turn on the global setting and only turn on the limit for the reports using the template by adding property:

<property name="net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages.enabled" value="true"/>

<property name="net.sf.jasperreports.governor.max.pages" value="{arbitrary number}"/>

Whenever you're doing the changes to the ad hoc template, remember to re-generate the reports as these changes are not propagated into existing reports that are using this template.