Skip to main content

BIRT reporting system for PHP web applications

BIRT is an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE. BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse, and a runtime component (Birt Viewer) that you can add to your app server. [ref: http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/intro/]

Although BIRT is designed to be integrated into a J2EE web application, you can use it in any other development environment such as PHP. A brief description about how it works is given below.

To design the reports, BIRT designer should be installed. There are few ways to do that, and those are described in - http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/build/#introduction . Designing reports is extremely easy, and tools are there to bind data with database tables/fields, build queries etc..

The next thing is, there should be a instance of BIRT report viewer installed in a web server like tomcat. How to install BIRT viewer in tomcat is described here - http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/deploy/viewerSetup.php#install_jdbc (BIRT viewer is the tool that you used to view the reports). After installing the viewer, report design files can be hosted there.


Now you can request the report . Given below is a very basic example, which passes only one parameter to the Report Viewer. How PHP applications can use BIRT is described here - http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/deploy/usingPHP.php#dynamic . 

     /*
     * @param sfWebRequest $request
     */
    public function executeTestReport(sfWebRequest $request){

        $repName = "new_report.rptdesign";
        // Redirect browser
        $dest = "http://localhost:8080/birt-viewer/frameset?__report={$repName}";
        header("Location: $dest" );
        die();
    }

http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/tutorial/ - This Basic Tutorial walks you though the steps to build a basic listing report and introduces the basic BIRT concepts.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Scott LevyFebruary 5, 2012 at 5:52 PM

    Nice post. Here’s a tool to use to create and publish your report online in minutes, without coding. You can create different graphs and layouts http://www.caspio.com/online-database/features/reports.aspx

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to create a new module for vtiger...

Recently, I had to create a new module for vtigerCRM for my client in current working place. I did search in many places including the official vtiger sites, but couldn’t find a better documentation for my purpose. The latest vtiger version at that time was 5.0.3. Because I had some experience doing lots of core modifications for this system, I did decide to read the source code and find how to add a new module. Finally, I could create a new module and started the project. So, I thought it will be a good thing to write some thing on my blog about this topic, so that others who want to do this thing can read. Given below is a brief description about how to create a new module for vtiger CRM 5.0.3. Source code of this example module is also available to Download . Step 01: Creating the module directory and minimum required files. Create a directory called “newModule” inside your vtiger modules directory, or any other name that you prefer. Now, module index file should be created. Creat
49 comments
Read more

How to create a waveform animation with HTML and JavaScript

Recently, for a pet project, I wanted to create an animation of a waveform based on the varying decibel level of the microphone input. I was thinking about a really simple way to accomplish this with SVG and JavaScript. Given below is the first sample code I did on the Codepen. You can change this code to use with any framework of your choice. For this sample code, I am using a random number as the microphone input. You can replace it with any other time based input. Code Pen : https://codepen.io/nadeeth/pen/vmaYXw For this example, you need an HTML code snippet like the one given below. It’s just an SVG with a Polyline element inside.  <div style="text-align:center">   <svg height="150" width="400" id='svg'>     <polyline id="polyline-id" fill="none" stroke="#005c66" stroke-width="1" />   </svg> </div> And then the plain Javascript code to animate the polyline. You can
15 comments
Read more

Common Characteristics of Enterprise Applications

Last week, I was conducting a tech talk about “Architectural Patterns of Enterprise Applications” with our team. The discussion was mainly based on Marin Fowler's famous book “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture”. So, I thought, it's good to write something about that in my Blog. Given below are few common characteristics of Enterprise Applications. If any software product has the following characteristics, we can identify it as an Enterprise Application. These ware originally documented by “Martin Fowler”, in his book “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture”. Persistent Data - Enterprise applications usually involve persistent data. The data is persistent because it needs to be around between multiple runs of the program—indeed, it usually needs to persist for several years. Also during this time there will be many changes in the programs that use it. Lot of Data - There's usually a lot of data, a moderate system will have over 1 GB of data organ
9 comments
Read more