XML EMITTER

Hi everyone,

I noticed several articles floating around about the elusive Birt XML Emitter, but nothing complete.

I even bought the book Integrating and Extending BIRT by Jason Weatherby, Tom Bondour, and Iana Chatalbasheva.
It gives some good example tutorials on how to get about 80% of a Birt CSV and XML Emitters, but again it is missing the full deal.

I did manage to get a CSV Emitter fully working with the help of the book and this guys version http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/csv-emitter-birt-plugin/downloads/list

I'm having some luck with the XML emitter, but I'm new to JAVA and creating emitters in Birt. I would love it if someone had a full example I could tap into?

Thanks, I look forward for someones insight.

Drew Dudek

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Yaytay

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'drewdudek'" data-cid="98355" data-time="1332970527" data-date="28 March 2012 - 02:35 PM">
Hi everyone, 
 
I noticed several articles floating around about the elusive Birt XML Emitter, but nothing complete. 
 
I even bought the book Integrating and Extending BIRT by Jason Weatherby, Tom Bondour, and Iana Chatalbasheva. 
It gives some good example tutorials on how to get about 80% of a Birt CSV and XML Emitters, but again it is missing the full deal. 
 
I did manage to get a CSV Emitter fully working with the help of the book and this guys version <a class='bbc_url' href='http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/csv-emitter-birt-plugin/downloads/list'>http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/csv-emitter-birt-plugin/downloads/list</a> 
 
I'm having some luck with the XML emitter, but I'm new to JAVA and creating emitters in Birt. I would love it if someone had a full example I could tap into? 
 
Thanks, I look forward for someones insight. 
 
Drew Dudek </blockquote>
One of the problems with writing an XML emitter is that XML is very variable - for example any of the XLSX emitters output XML, but probably not in a form that is useful for you. 
You also have to decide how to handle such things as images, multiple tables, nested tables, formatting, ... 
And, of course, unless your emitter has a vast number of options the decisions you make may not be useful to anyone else. 
 
That said, if you ignore all of the complexities and decide how to represent basic tabular data in XML then writing an emitter isn't particularly difficult. 
The <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.spudsoft.co.uk/2011/10/the-spudsoft-birt-excel-emitters/'>SpudSoft BIRT Excel emitters</a> started out life as something not much more complex than this: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://digiassn.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/birt-writing-emitter.html'>http://digiassn.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/birt-writing-emitter.html</a> and have steadily gained more features. 
My advice would be to decide what features you need to support (and how you are going to deal with the features you don't support); decide on your XML structure; decide on your approach to writing the XML (a streaming approach is good, but supporting some BIRT features may make you want to go back to previous rows); and then get stuck in with that Digital Voice blog. 
 
Jim

drewdudek

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'Yaytay'" data-cid="98372" data-time="1333030339" data-date="29 March 2012 - 07:12 AM">
One of the problems with writing an XML emitter is that XML is very variable - for example any of the XLSX emitters output XML, but probably not in a form that is useful for you. 
You also have to decide how to handle such things as images, multiple tables, nested tables, formatting, ... 
And, of course, unless your emitter has a vast number of options the decisions you make may not be useful to anyone else. 
 
That said, if you ignore all of the complexities and decide how to represent basic tabular data in XML then writing an emitter isn't particularly difficult. 
The <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.spudsoft.co.uk/2011/10/the-spudsoft-birt-excel-emitters/'>SpudSoft BIRT Excel emitters</a> started out life as something not much more complex than this: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://digiassn.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/birt-writing-emitter.html'>http://digiassn.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/birt-writing-emitter.html</a> and have steadily gained more features. 
My advice would be to decide what features you need to support (and how you are going to deal with the features you don't support); decide on your XML structure; decide on your approach to writing the XML (a streaming approach is good, but supporting some BIRT features may make you want to go back to previous rows); and then get stuck in with that Digital Voice blog. 
 
Jim </blockquote>
 
Jim, thank you for your response and advice, I appreciate it. I should be able to get what I want from this. 
 
Drew