Developing an Eclipse BIRT XML Report Rendering Extension

BIRT Report Engine provides report rendering extensions that render a report in HTML, PDF, XLS, PostScript, and Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. In BIRT release 2.2.1, the BIRT report rendering extension API supports rendering a report in a customized format, such as XML.

This article describes a sample implementation of customized XML report rendering extension, org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.xml. The sample code creates a plug-in that writes the data contents of a report to a file in the specified format.

A rendering extension adds an emitter to the BIRT Report Engine framework by implementing the extension point, org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitters. The XML schema file, org.eclipse.birt.report.engine/schema/emitters.exsd, describes this extension point.

The extension point enables support for a new output format in the presentation engine. The BIRT plug-in registry uses this extension point to discover all supported output formats specified for the report engine environment.

Developing an XML Report Rendering Extension

Click here for a larger image.

Figure 1: XML report rendering extension project

The sample XML report rendering extension is a plug-in that can export BIRT report data in XML format. Typically, report developers render BIRT report data to XML to enable sharing data with another application.

The sample XML report rendering extension contains the following features:

• Exports BIRT report data in XML format
• The XML report rendering plug-in renders each report element and writes to the output file, <report_name>.xml.
• Defines a public API for rendering BIRT reports in XML format

  The plug-in extends the functionality defined by the org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter extension point defined in the org.eclipse.birt.report.engine plug-in.

• Allows the user to specify an XML schema for formatting output

  During the rendering process, the sample plug-in processes all the elements in the report design, exporting XML properties and related data to the output file. Optionally, the plug-in supports mapping the report elements to an XML schema to provide additional formatting for output.

  The plug-in defines these mappings in the property file, <report_name>.xmlemitter. The plug-in reads the property file at run time and loads the custom tags.

Creating a XML Report Rendering Plug-In Project

Create a new plug-in project for the XML report rendering extension using the Eclipse PDE.

How to create the XML report rendering plug-in project

1. From the Eclipse PDE menu, choose File→New→Project.
2. On New Project, select Plug-in Project.
3. In Plug-in Project, modify the settings, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Values for Plug-in Project fields

Section	Option	Value
Plug-in Project	Project name	org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.xml
	Use default location	Selected
	Location	Not available when you select Use default location
Project Settings	Create a Java project	Selected
	Source folder	src
	Output folder	bin
Target Platform	Eclipse version	3.3
	an OSGi framework	Not selected

4. In Plug-in Content, modify the settings, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Values for Plug-in Content fields

Section	Option	Value
Plug-in Properties	Plug-in ID	org.eclipse.birt.report .engine.emitter.xml
	Plug-in Version	1.0.0
	Plug-in Name	BIRT XML Emitter
	Plug-in Provider	yourCompany.com or leave blank
	Classpath	xmlEmitter.jar or leave blank
Plug-in Options	Generate an activator, a Java class that controls the plug-in's life cycle	Selected
	Activator	org.eclipse.birt.report .engine.emitter.xml.XmlPlugin
	This plug-in will make contributions to the UI	Not selected
Rich Client Application	Would you like to create a rich client application?	No

5. Choose Finish.

The XML report rendering extension project appears in the Eclipse PDE workbench, as shown in Figure 1.