Typically, you will use the ResourceBundleViewResolver to map view names to view classes and files in a properties file.

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
    <property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

Here we've configured an instance of the ResourceBundleViewResolver class that will look for view mappings in the resource bundle with base name views. (The content of this file is described in the next section.)

The Spring Framework contains five different View implementations for JasperReports, four of which correspond to one of the four output formats supported by JasperReports, and one that allows for the format to be determined at runtime:

Mapping one of these classes to a view name and a report file is a matter of adding the appropriate entries into the resource bundle configured in the previous section as shown here:

simpleReport.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsPdfView
simpleReport.url=/WEB-INF/reports/DataSourceReport.jasper

Here you can see that the view with name simpleReport is mapped to the JasperReportsPdfView class, causing the output of this report to be rendered in PDF format. The url property of the view is set to the location of the underlying report file.

JasperReports has two distinct types of report file: the design file, which has a .jrxml extension, and the compiled report file, which has a .jasper extension. Typically, you use the JasperReports Ant task to compile your .jrxml design file into a .jasper file before deploying it into your application. With the Spring Framework you can map either of these files to your report file and the framework will take care of compiling the .jrxml file on the fly for you. You should note that after a .jrxml file is compiled by the Spring Framework, the compiled report is cached for the lifetime of the application. To make changes to the file you will need to restart your application.

The JasperReportsMultiFormatView allows for report format to be specified at runtime. The actual rendering of the report is delegated to one of the other JasperReports view classes - the JasperReportsMultiFormatView class simply adds a wrapper layer that allows for the exact implementation to be specified at runtime.

The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class introduces two concepts: the format key and the discriminator key. The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class uses the mapping key to lookup the actual view implementation class and uses the format key to lookup up the mapping key. From a coding perspective you add an entry to your model with the formay key as the key and the mapping key as the value, for example:

public ModelAndView handleSimpleReportMulti(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

  String uri = request.getRequestURI();
  String format = uri.substring(uri.lastIndexOf(".") + 1);

  Map model = getModel();
  model.put("format", format);

  return new ModelAndView("simpleReportMulti", model);
}

In this example, the mapping key is determined from the extension of the request URI and is added to the model under the default format key: format. If you wish to use a different format key then you can configure this using the formatKey property of the JasperReportsMultiFormatView class.

By default the following mapping key mappings are configured in JasperReportsMultiFormatView:

So in the example above a request to URI /foo/myReport.pdf would be mapped to the JasperReportsPdfView class. You can override the mapping key to view class mappings using the formatMappings property of JasperReportsMultiFormatView.

To control which sub-report files are included in a master report using Spring, your report file must be configured to accept sub-reports from an external source. To do this you declare a parameter in your report file like so:

<parameter name="ProductsSubReport" class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport"/>

Then, you define your sub-report to use this sub-report parameter:

<subreport>
    <reportElement isPrintRepeatedValues="false" x="5" y="25" width="325"
        height="20" isRemoveLineWhenBlank="true" backcolor="#ffcc99"/>
    <subreportParameter name="City">
        <subreportParameterExpression><![CDATA[$F{city}]]></subreportParameterExpression>
    </subreportParameter>
    <dataSourceExpression><![CDATA[$P{SubReportData}]]></dataSourceExpression>
    <subreportExpression class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport">
                  <![CDATA[$P{ProductsSubReport}]]></subreportExpression>
</subreport>

This defines a master report file that expects the sub-report to be passed in as an instance of net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReports under the parameter ProductsSubReport. When configuring your Jasper view class, you can instruct Spring to load a report file and pass into the JasperReports engine as a sub-report using the subReportUrls property:

<property name="subReportUrls">
    <map>
        <entry key="ProductsSubReport" value="/WEB-INF/reports/subReportChild.jrxml"/>
    </map>
</property>

Here, the key of the Map corresponds to the name of the sub-report parameter in th report design file, and the entry is the URL of the report file. Spring will load this report file, compiling it if necessary, and will pass into the JasperReports engine under the given key.

This step is entirely optional when using Spring configure your sub-reports. If you wish, you can still configure the data source for your sub-reports using static queries. However, if you want Spring to convert data returned in your ModelAndView into instances of JRDataSource then you need to specify which of the parameters in your ModelAndView Spring should convert. To do this configure the list of parameter names using the subReportDataKeys property of the your chosen view class:

<property name="subReportDataKeys"
    value="SubReportData"/>

Here, the key you supply MUST correspond to both the key used in your ModelAndView and the key used in your report design file.