specifyconsortium/report-runner repository overview

⁠Specify Report Runner Service

This project implements a simple web service wrapper around the Jasper Reports libraries for report and label generation in Specify 7.

⁠Requirements

• Java JDK >= 1.7
• Apache Maven 2

⁠Test Service

After cloning the repository, build with mvn compile. The test server can be started using the Maven Jetty plugin: mvn jetty:run. The service will run on port 8080 on localhost adapter. These values can be changed in jetty.xml. Because there is no authentication, the report service should run on the same machine as the Specify 7 server or on a private subnet and only bind an address that is not routed externally.

In the Specify 7 (development branch) settings file, typically specifyweb/settings/local_specify_settings.py, set the values REPORT_RUNNER_HOST and REPORT_RUNNER_PORT appropriately and restart. A Reports task will now be available on the taskbar at the top of the Specify 7 web application.

⁠Fonts

Unless the report runner service is provided with the fonts used in a report it will use built-in PDF fonts. The consequences range in severity from slight differences in appearance to rendered text overflowing bounding boxes resulting in truncation.

To provide fonts to be used by this service, a font extension jar file can be added to src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/ before compiling. There is a good description of creating the font extension file at http://javaskeleton.blogspot.com/2010/12/embedding-fonts-into-pdf-generated-by.html⁠ If you follow the iReport instructions in that guide, be sure to include the variants (italic, bold and bold italic) for each font added.

⁠Running as a service

Use the following SystemD script to start report runner service

PS: change User and home path to your needs.

[Unit]
Description=Specify Report Runner Service 
# Author Job Diogenes Ribeiro Borges
Wants=network.target
ConditionPathExists=/home/specify/report-runner-service

[Service]
User=specify
WorkingDirectory=/home/specify/report-runner-service
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mvn jetty:run

[Install]
Alias=ireportrunner.service

⁠Missing Barcode Text

When running with a headless JRE, there is a bug in the barbecue barcode generation library that prevents the text value of a barcode from be included even if that option is turned on in the report definition. The bug has been fixed⁠ in the barbecue repository⁠ in an unreleased version, 1.9-dev. The solution is to clone the barbecue repository locally and build and install the maven artifact.

git clone https://github.com/barbecue-sf/barbecue.git
cd barbecue/barbecue
mvn compile
mvn install

Then update the pom.xml in this repository to depend on version 1.9-dev instead of the currently released 1.5-beta1.