How to extend JasperReports Server's functionality on AWS

Use case

It is a common use case to extend/customize the out-of-the-box functionality of TIBCO JasperReports^® Server, for example implementing custom beans, adding new report exporters etc. Users sometimes run into question how to apply such customization to Jaspersoft for AWS.

Solution

For single instance deployments

When it comes to AWS, you can extend and/or customize JasperReports Server the same way as any on premise deployment. The application is deployed on Tomcat and can be found in /usr/share/tomcat7/webapps/jasperserver-pro folder. So for example if you were to add any custom jars you'll have to put them under /usr/share/tomcat7/webapps/jasperserver-pro/WEB-INF/lib folder, and then configure the corresponding files under /usr/share/tomcat7/webapps/jasperserver-pro/WEB-INF.

For clustered deployments

Since in clustered setup the EC2 instances can be spun up and shut down dynamically, you will need to put the customized JasperReports Server files to the S3 bucket, which should have been created as part of your AWS cluster. In S3 you will have to create a folder structure which mimics Tomcat's folder structure, starting from the level of /webapps. So if for example you need to customize the login.jsp file, you'll have to create a structure like this:

webapps/jasperserver-pro/WEB-INF/jsp/modules/login

and then upload the customized login.jsp there. More information on uploading configs and other customized files to S3 can be found here:

https://community.jaspersoft.com/documentation/tibco-jaspersoft-aws-user-guide/v750/using-customized-configuration-file-instances

For detailed information on cusomizing JasperReports Server please refer to our Ultimate Guide available here:

https://community.jaspersoft.com/documentation/tibco-jasperreports-server-ultimate-guide/v640/introduction