BIRT - Hiding Empty Fields on a Report
Paul Bappoo
www.BIRTReporting.com.
INTRODUCTION
Recently I needed to create a purchase order report and one of the
challenges I found whilst doing this was that I needed to create an
address block at the
top of the report for the suppliers address. In itself this was easy
of course, I just placed my address fields, one after the other in a
grid cell.
But I found that some of the supplier addresses did not use all the
fields available and the result was that I had gaps in my address
block where the blank
fields were.
It appears that there are a number of ways to solve this problem, I
looked on the forums and found many solutions. In this quick guide I
present the quickest
and easiest method that I found so you too can have well formatted
addresses, or for that matter any other data that requires blank
fields to be removed from
the report layout at run time.
THE PROBLEM
I have a report with an address block. Typically this could be a
purchase order, an invoice or a supplier/customer listing.
In my case it was a purchase order, here is a screenshot of the report
layout, showing the address block.
You can see that I have created a grid and populated the cells with
the address fields from my database.
When the report is executed, any fields in the address block where
there is no data, leave an ugly gap, as in the following screen shot.
THE VISIBILITY PROPERTY
In order to make the address fields disappear when not populated with
data, we can use the field visibility property.
Select the field you wish to hide when empty and from the properties
section in the lower portion of the screen, select the visibility tab.
Check the box “Hide element” and select the radio button “for all
outputs”
Note that you can elect to hide empty fields for specific output
types, by selecting the radio button “for specific outputs” this then
allows you to select
which output formats will behave in this way and which wont, as per
the following screen shot.
Once you have selected the output style to be affected, select the
function button to the left of the Expression field.
And you will see the expression builder.
Enter the formula as follows:
row["Address1"]==""|| row["Address1"]==null
Where Address1 is the name of the field whose properties you are
currently editing.
Here is the expression builder for the Address1 field, with the
formula entered.
Now when the report is executed, any blank fields vanish and all the
other fields are moved up to fill the gap.
MORE INFORMATION
BIRt for Beginners, written by Paul Bappoo, the founder of the BIRT
User Group UK presents an overview of the open source BIRT tools and
the commercial
enhancements available from Actuate, including...
Eclipse BIRT Designer, Actuate BIRT Designer, iServer Express,
Interactive BIRT viewer, Actuate BIRT Studio, BIRT Spreadsheet
Designer
With walkthrough tutorials of the main features, including
screenshots, from installation through data selection to formatting
reports and fully graphical
Flash charting this book will have you creating your own reports from
scratch in only a couple of hours.
If you are too busy to spend days learning software and want tangible
results fast then BIRT For Beginners is for you.
When you buy the book you will automatically get access to the readers
section of this web site which includes BIRT report request forms that
you can
distribute to your end users, extra chapters in PDF format and an ever
growing library of reports, tutorials, reviews, tips & tricks.
Buy the book and get free membership of BIRT Reporting and the BIRT
User Group UK at:
Please feel free to share this address with your colleagues and
inspire them to use BIRT to create great looking reports.
I look forward to your feedback so please feel free to send me an
email and let me know how you get on with BIRT, provide feedback on
this guide, share your
tips and tricks, or request help for specific problems. I can’t
guarantee to personally solve everyone’s problems but there are some
great BIRT related
forums out there and you can find a growing list of links and
resources on my site.
Paul Bappoo
Pa...@BirtReporting.com
http://www.BIRTReporting.com