Report Fonts

A report contains text elements and each of these can have its own font settings. These settings can be specified using the <font> tag available in the <textElement> tag. A report can define a number of fonts. Once defined, they can be used as default or base font settings for other font definitions throughout the entire report.

Report Fonts

A report font is a collection of font settings, declared at the report level. A report font can be reused throughout the entire report template when setting the font properties of text elements.

Report fonts are now deprecated. Do not use <reportFont/> elements declared within the document itself. Use the <style/> element instead.

Font Attributes

Table below summarizes the main attributes of the <font> element −

Font Types

In JasperReports fonts can be categorized as −

• Logical Fonts − Five font types, which have been recognized by the Java platform since version 1.0, are called logical fonts. These are − Serif, SansSerif, Monospaced, Dialog, and DialogInput. These logical fonts are not actual font libraries that are installed anywhere on the system. They are merely font type names recognized by the Java runtime. These must be mapped to some physical font that is installed on the system.

• Physical Fonts − These fonts are the actual font libraries consisting of, for example, TrueType or PostScript Type 1 fonts. The physical fonts may be Arial, Time, Helvetica, Courier, or any number of other fonts, including international fonts.

• Font Extensions − The JasperReports library can make use of fonts registered on-the-fly at runtime, through its built-in support for font extensions. A list of font families can be made available to the JasperReports using font extension. These are made out of similarly looking font faces and supporting specific locales.

As described in the table above we need to specify in the attribute fontName the name of a physical font, the name of a logical font, or the name of a font family from the registered JasperReports font extensions.

PDF Font Name

JasperReports library uses the iText library, when exporting reports to PDF(Portable Document Format). PDF files can be viewed on various platforms and will always look the same. This is partially because in this format, there is a special way of dealing with fonts. fontName attribute is of no use when exporting to PDF. Attribute pdfFontName exist where we need to specify the font settings.

The iText library knows how to deal with built-in fonts and TTF files and recognizes the following built-in font names −

• Courier
• Courier-Bold
• Courier-BoldOblique
• Courier-Oblique
• Helvetica
• Helvetica-Bold
• Helvetica-BoldOblique
• Helvetica-Oblique
• Symbol
• Times-Roman
• Times-Bold
• Times-BoldItalic
• Times-Italic
• ZapfDingbats

As per iText library pre-requisite, to work with fonts, we need to specify one of the following as the font name −

• A built-in font name from the above list.

• The name of a TTF (True Type Font) file, which it can locate on disk.

• The real name of the font, provided that the TTF file containing the font has been previously registered with iText or that an alias was defined when the font was registered.

Based on the above pre-requisites, the pdfFontName attribute can contain one of the following values −

• The name of a built-in PDF font from the above list.

• The name of a TTF file that can be located on disk at runtime when exporting to PDF.

• The real name of a registered font.

• The suffix of the key (the part after net.sf.jasperreports.export.pdf.font) for a font registered with iText as a font file.

Default Fonts and Inheritance

Each text element inherits font and style attributes from its parent element, which in turn inherits these attributes from its parent. If no styles and/or fonts are defined for elements, the default style (and/or font - but this is now deprecated) declared in the <jasperReport/> root element will be applied.

Defining default styles or fonts in JasperReports is not mandatory. If no font is defined for a given element, the engine looks either for the inherited font attributes, or, if no attributes are found on this way, it looks for the net.sf.jasperreports.default.font.name property in the /src/default.jasperreports.properties file. Its value defines the name of the font family to be used when font properties are not explicitly defined for a text element or inherited from its parent.

The main default font properties and their values defined in the /src/default.jasperreports.properties file are in the table below −

Example

To demonstrate using fonts and font attributes in order to get a particular text appearance, let's write new report template (jasper_report_template.jrxml). The contents of the JRXML are as below. Save it to C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test directory. Here, we will display a text in the title of the report in various font formats.

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>

<jasperReport xmlns = "http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports
   http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/xsd/jasperreport.xsd"
   name = "jasper_report_template" pageWidth = "595" pageHeight = "842"
   columnWidth = "555" leftMargin = "20" rightMargin = "20" topMargin = "30"
   bottomMargin = "30">

   <title>
      <band height = "682">
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "50" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "50" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
           <![CDATA[<staticText>
           <reportElement x = "0" y = "50" width = "150" height = "40"/>
           <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "100" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font size = "12"/>
         </textElement>
         
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "100" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "100" width = "150" height = "40"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font size = "14"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text> Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "150" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font fontName = "DejaVu Serif" size = "12" isBold = "false"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "150" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "250" width = "150" height = "40"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font fontName = "DejaVu Serif" size = "12" isBold = "false"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "200" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font fontName = "DejaVu Serif" size = "12" isBold = "true"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "200" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "300" width = "150" height = "40"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font fontName = "DejaVu Serif" size = "12" isBold = "true"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "250" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font fontName = "Monospaced" size = "12" isItalic = "true" 
               isUnderline = "true" pdfFontName = "Courier-Oblique"/>
         </textElement>
         
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "250" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "350" width = "150" height = "40"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font fontName = "Monospaced" size = "12" isItalic = "true"
                  isUnderline = "true" pdfFontName = "Courier-Oblique"/>
            </textElement>
            
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "300" width = "150" height = "40"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font fontName = "Monospaced" size = "12" isBold = "true"
               isStrikeThrough = "true" pdfFontName = "Courier-Bold"/>
         </textElement>
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "300" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "400" width = "150" height = "40"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font fontName = "Monospaced" size = "12" isBold = "true"
                  isStrikeThrough = "true" pdfFontName = "Courier-Bold"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "350" width = "150" height = "40" 
            forecolor = "#FF0000"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font size = "14"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "350" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "450" width = "150" height = "40"
               forecolor = "red"/>
            
            <textElement><font size = "14"/></textElement>
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "400" width = "150" height = "40" mode = "Opaque"
            forecolor = "#00FF00" backcolor = "#FFFF00"/>
         
         <textElement>
            <font fontName = "Serif" size = "12" isBold = "true" 
               pdfFontName = "Times-Bold"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "400" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "500" width = "150" height = "40"
               forecolor = "green" backcolor = "#FFFF00" mode = "Opaque"/>
            
            <textElement>
               <font fontName = "Serif" size = "12" isBold = "true"
                  pdfFontName = "Times-Bold"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "0" y = "450" width = "150" height = "40" mode = "Opaque"
            forecolor = "#0000FF" backcolor = "#FFDD99"/>
         
         <textElement textAlignment = "Center" verticalAlignment = "Middle">
            <font fontName = "SansSerif" size = "12" isBold = "false"
            isItalic = "true" pdfFontName = "Sans.Slanted" isPdfEmbedded = "true"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "450" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "550" width = "150" height = "90"
               forecolor = "blue" backcolor = "#FFDD99" mode = "Opaque"/>
            
            <textElement textAlignment = "Center" verticalAlignment = "Middle">
               <font fontName = "SansSerif" size = "12" isBold = "false"
                  pdfFontName = "Sans.Slanted" isPdfEmbedded = "true"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement mode = "Opaque" x = "0" y = "500" width = "150" height = "40"
            forecolor = "#FF0000" backcolor = "#99DDFF"/>
         
         <textElement textAlignment = "Right" verticalAlignment = "Bottom">
            <font fontName = "SansSerif" size = "12" isBold = "true"
               pdfFontName = "DejaVu Sans Bold" isPdfEmbedded = "true"/>
         </textElement>
			
         <text><![CDATA[Welcome to Howcodex!]]></text>
      </staticText>
      
      <staticText>
         <reportElement x = "160" y = "500" width = "390" height = "40"/>
         <textElement/>
         
         <text>
            <![CDATA[<staticText>
            <reportElement x = "0" y = "650" width = "150" height = "90"    forecolor = "red"
               backcolor = "#99DDFF" mode = "Opaque"/>
            
            <textElement textAlignment = "Right" verticalAlignment = "Bottom">
               <font fontName = "SansSerif" size = "12" isBold = "true"
                  pdfFontName = "DejaVu Sans Bold" isPdfEmbedded = "true"/>
            </textElement>
				
            <text>Welcome to Howcodex!</text></staticText>]]>
         </text>
      
      </staticText>
   
   </band>
</title>

</jasperReport>

The java code to fill and generate the report is as given below. Let's save this file JasperFontsReportFill.java to C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\src\com\howcodex directory.

package com.howcodex;

import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JREmptyDataSource;
import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JRException;
import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperFillManager;

public class JasperFontsReportFill {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      String sourceFileName = "C://tools/jasperreports-5.0.1/test/" + 
         "jasper_report_template.jasper";

      try {
         JasperFillManager.fillReportToFile(sourceFileName, null,
            new JREmptyDataSource());
      } catch (JRException e) {
         // TODO Auto-generated catch block
         e.printStackTrace();
      }

   }
}

Here, we use an instance of JREmptyDataSource when filling reports to simulate a data source with one record in it, but with all the fields being null.

Report Generation

We will compile and execute the above file using our regular ANT build process. The contents of the file build.xml (saved under directory C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test) are as given below.

The import file - baseBuild.xml is picked from chapter Environment Setup and should be placed in the same directory as the build.xml.

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<project name = "JasperReportTest" default = "viewFillReport" basedir = ".">
   <import file = "baseBuild.xml" />
   
   <target name = "viewFillReport" depends = "compile,compilereportdesing,run"
      description = "Launches the report viewer to preview the report 
      stored in the .JRprint file.">
      
      <java classname = "net.sf.jasperreports.view.JasperViewer" fork = "true">
         <arg value = "-F${file.name}.JRprint" />
         <classpath refid = "classpath" />
      </java>
		
   </target>
   
   <target name = "compilereportdesing" description = "Compiles the JXML file and
      produces the .jasper file.">
      
      <taskdef name = "jrc" classname = "net.sf.jasperreports.ant.JRAntCompileTask">
         <classpath refid = "classpath" />
      </taskdef>
      
      <jrc destdir = ".">
         <src>
            <fileset dir = ".">
               <include name = "*.jrxml" />
            </fileset>
         </src>
         <classpath refid = "classpath" />
      </jrc>
   
   </target>
	
</project>

Next, let's open command line window and go to the directory where build.xml is placed. Finally, execute the command ant -Dmain-class=com.howcodex.JasperFontsReportFill (viewFullReport is the default target) as −

C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test>ant -Dmain-class=com.howcodex.JasperFontsReportFill
Buildfile: C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\build.xml

clean-sample:
   [delete] Deleting directory C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\classes
   [delete] Deleting: C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\jasper_report_template.jasper
   [delete] Deleting: C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\jasper_report_template.jrprint

compile:
   [mkdir] Created dir: C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\classes
   [javac] C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\baseBuild.xml:28:
   warning: 'includeantruntime' was not set, defaulting to build.
   [javac] Compiling 5 source files to C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\classes

compilereportdesing:
   [jrc] Compiling 1 report design files.
   [jrc] log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger
   (net.sf.jasperreports.engine.xml.JRXmlDigesterFactory).
   [jrc] log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
   [jrc] log4j:WARN See http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#noconfig for more info.
   [jrc] File : C:\tools\jasperreports-5.0.1\test\jasper_report_template.jrxml ... OK.

run:
   [echo] Runnin class : com.howcodex.JasperFontsReportFill
   [java] log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger
   (net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnvironment).
   [java] log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.

viewFillReport:
   [java] log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger
   (net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnvironment).
   [java] log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 45 minutes 3 seconds

As a result of above compilation, a JasperViewer window opens up as shown in the screen given below −

Here, we can see that the text "Welcome to Howcodex" is displayed in different font formats.