To examine a report item, check the class of the report item and cast the object to its actual class. Then, call methods appropriate to that class. For example, the class of a label element handle is LabelHandle. To get the text that the label displays, call LabelHandle.getText( ).

Some report items, such as a label or a text element, are simple items. Other items, such as a grid or a table element, are structured items. Access properties for the whole of a structured item in the same way as for a simple item. To examine the contents of a structured item, iterate over its slots. Use this technique to determine the contents of a cell in a table. First, call a method to retrieve a slot handle for the table’s rows. Next, iterate over the contents of the slot to access the cells. For example, to access the RowHandle objects that make up a table element’s footer, call TableHandle.getFooter( ). Table and list elements also have a slot for groups.