A reporting application can use a simple report design or a template to create more complex designs. The application can add extra report items to the design’s structure based on external conditions. For example, based on the user name of the user requesting generation of a report, the application can add extra information to the report for that category of user. To create a design entirely with the API, use the same techniques to add content to the design.

The class that creates new elements, such as report items, in a report design is ElementFactory. This class provides methods of the form, newXXX( ), where XXX is the type of report element to create. The method newElement( ) is a generic method that creates an element of any type. To access the element factory, call the ReportDesign.getElementFactory( ) method.

Place new report items directly in the body slot, within containers such as a cell in a table or grid, or on the master page. The model API supports adding a simple item, such as a label, or complex items, such as a table with contents in its cells. The location of the new report item is a slot, such as the body slot of the report design or a cell slot in a row in a table. To add a report item to a slot, use one of the SlotHandle.add( ) methods. The method has two signatures that support adding the report item to the end of a slot, or to a particular position in a slot.

Table and list elements iterate over the rows that a data set provides. To support access to the data rows for these report item types, bind the item to a data set. The table or list element provides data rows to the report items that it contains. For this reason, bind only the container item to a data set, as described later in this chapter.