To provide information about report items, each class has getter methods specific to the report item type. For example, an image element handle, ImageHandle, has the getURI( ) method. This method returns the URI of an image referenced by URL or file path. The DesignElementHandle class and other ancestor classes in the hierarchy also provide generic getter methods, such as getName( ).

Some properties of a report item are simple properties of a Java type or type wrapper class. An example of a simple property is the name property, which is a String object. Some simple properties, like name, have an arbitrary value. Other simple properties have restricted values from a set of BIRT String constants. The interface, DesignChoiceConstants in the package, org.eclipse.birt.report.model.api.elements, defines these constants. For example, the image source property of an image element can have one of only the values, IMAGE_REF_TYPE_EMBED, IMAGE_REF_TYPE_EXPR, IMAGE_REF_TYPE_FILE, IMAGE_REF_TYPE_NONE, or IMAGE_REF_TYPE_URL.

Other properties are complex properties and the getter method returns a handle object. For example, the DesignElementHandle.getStyle( ) method returns a SharedStyleHandle object and ReportItemHandle.getWidth( ) returns a DimensionHandle object. The handle classes provide access to complex properties of a report item, as described later in this chapter. These classes provide getter methods for attributes of the complex properties. For example, StyleHandle classes provide access to background color, font, and highlights.