Task 7: Format the report
Now that you verified that the report displays the correct data in the correct order, you can turn your attention to improving the report’s appearance. You perform the following tasks in this section:
Edit the column headings
2 Double-click the first column heading, CUSTOMERNAME. The column heading is in the first row—the header row—of the table.
3 To replace all the highlighted text, start typing, then press Enter when you finish. To edit the text, click once to deselect the text, then position the cursor where you want to add or delete characters.
4 Figure 1-23 Revised column headings in a report designFormat the column headings
To format a report element, set its properties in one of the following two ways:
Set an element’s properties through Property Editor. Use this method to format only the selected element.
Define a style that contains the desired properties, and apply the style to an element. Use this method to define format properties once and apply them to more than one element.You might notice that in the report design, the column headings appear in plain text and are center-aligned. The generated HTML report, however, displays the column headings in bold and centered. This discrepancy occurs because BIRT uses the browser’s default format for items placed in a table header.
In this procedure, you use the Property Editor to align the column headings to the left, and you define a style to add color to the header row.
1 Select all the column headings. To select multiple elements, press and hold the Shift key as you click each element. Property Editor displays the properties for the selected elements, as shown in Figure 1-24.
1 New Style appears, as shown in Figure 1-25. The left side displays the property categories. The right side displays the properties for the category that you select.Figure 1-25 New Style
3 Choose Background from the list of property categories. New Style displays the background properties that you can set.
4 Specify a color for the Background Color property, using one of the following methods:
Select the button next to the property, then select a color from the color palette that appears.
5 In the layout editor, select the table. Selecting the table causes guide cells to appear at the top and left side of the table, as shown in Figure 1-26.Figure 1-26 Guide cells at the top and left of a table
7 In Property Editor, choose Properties, then choose General to display the general properties for the row.
8 Apply the style that you just created by selecting table_header_row from the drop-down list next to Style. BIRT Report Designer applies the style to the header row and it appears in color.Figure 1-27 Report preview showing header row styleDisplay first and last names on the same line
When you place multiple elements in a single cell, BIRT Report Designer creates block-level elements. If you are familiar with HTML, you know that each block element starts on a new line. To display multiple elements on the same line, you need to set them as inline elements. Alternatively, you can concatenate the first and last name values to display in a single data element, as described in this procedure.
Edit Data Binding, shown in Figure 1-28, shows information about the data associated with the current data element. In Expression, dataSetRow["CONTACTFIRSTNAME"] indicates that the data element displays data from the CONTACTFIRSTNAME field in the data set.Figure 1-28 Edit Data BindingdataSetRow["CONTACTFIRSTNAME"] + " " + dataSetRow["CONTACTLASTNAME"]Figure 1-29 shows this expression in the expression builder. The empty quotation marks (" ") add a space between the first name and last name. You can type the expression in the text area or double-click an item in the lower right of the window to insert it in the expression.Figure 1-29 The expression builder displaying the expression to concatenate dataIncrease the space between rows
The default layout adds a minimum space between table rows. Typically, you will want to adjust the spacing between rows.
Figure 1-31 Selected table row in the layout editorProperty Editor displays the properties for the row. The title that appears in Property Editor shows the type of element that you select, so you should see Property Editor—Row.
3 In the General properties, set Height to 24 points. The height of the row increases, as shown in Figure 1-32.Figure 1-32 Row height set to 24 points
4 Preview the report. The report should look like the one shown in Figure 1-33. There is more space between the rows of data.Figure 1-33 Report preview showing increased row spacing
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