Integrating the BIRT Viewer into OpenReports using Struts Part 1

I wanted to integrate the BIRT 2.3.1 Viewer into OpenReports as a mini-project. The implementation is rather simple, and loose as this was done for a hobby (so nothing professional here) - but hopefully this will help someone out. The final result allows a user in OpenReports to view BIRT reports in the Ajax Based BIRT Web Viewer. I simply utilized the birt tag libraries to deploy the viewer using a simple jsp page.

Since OpenReports uses the Apache Struts 2 Framework, I did a little bit of simple reading on how to configure struts.xml.

Here, I'll give a mini-tutorial on how to get the BIRT Viewer into OpenReports.
The first part of this tutorial will show you how to integrate the viewer into open reports.
I'm using OpenReports 3.1 as of this post and BIRT 2.3.1

1. Download the OpenReports zip file here
2. Download the BIRT 2.3.1 run-time from BIRT here (birt-runtime-2_3_1.zip)
3. Next you'll need to update the BIRT Libraries in OpenReports to the one
which you want to deploy and at the same time we need
to integrate the BIRT Viewer by making some changes to the web.xml descriptor file
(In this tutorial, we'll be using BIRT 2.3.1)

a. We'll first copy the comlete directory that contains the BIRT Viewer located in
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\webcontent
to
openreports-tomcat\openreports\WebRoot\webcontent

b. Next take the jar files from the BIRT Web Application in
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\lib
and carefully copy and replace the old BIRT libraries (2.3.) in
Open reports found in openreports-tomcat\openreports\WebRoot\WEB-INF\lib

b. We need to also port the plugins, tlds, and web.xml to Open Reports.
Copy and integrate the following files from BIRT :

birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\platform
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\tlds
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\*.xml
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\server-config.wsdd
birt-runtime-2_3_1\WebViewerExample\WEB-INF\viewer.properties

to

openreports-tomcat\openreports\WebRoot\WEB-INF\
For the OpenReport web.xml file, make sure you add the following entries

 
 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_LOCALE
  en-US
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_TIMEZONE
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_WORKING_FOLDER
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_DOCUMENT_FOLDER
  
 

 
 
  WORKING_FOLDER_ACCESS_ONLY
  false
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_IMAGE_DIR
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_LOG_DIR
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_LOG_LEVEL
  WARNING
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_SCRIPTLIB_DIR
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_RESOURCE_PATH
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_MAX_ROWS
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_MAX_CUBE_ROWLEVELS
  
 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_MAX_CUBE_COLUMNLEVELS
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_CUBE_MEMORY_SIZE
  
 

 
 
  BIRT_OVERWRITE_DOCUMENT
  true
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_CONFIG_FILE
  WEB-INF/viewer.properties
 

 
 
  BIRT_VIEWER_PRINT_SERVERSIDE
  ON
 

 
 
  HTML_ENABLE_AGENTSTYLE_ENGINE
  true
 

 
 
     ViewerFilter
        org.eclipse.birt.report.filter.ViewerFilter
 
    
        ViewerFilter
        ViewerServlet
    
    
        ViewerFilter
        EngineServlet
    
      
 
 
  org.eclipse.birt.report.listener.ViewerServletContextListener
 

 
 
  org.eclipse.birt.report.listener.ViewerHttpSessionListener
 

 
 
  ViewerServlet
  org.eclipse.birt.report.servlet.ViewerServlet
 

 
 
  EngineServlet
  org.eclipse.birt.report.servlet.BirtEngineServlet
 

 
  ViewerServlet
  /frameset
 

 
  ViewerServlet
  /run
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /preview
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /download
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /parameter
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /document
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /output
 

 
  EngineServlet
  /extract
 

 
  
   /birt.tld
   /WEB-INF/tlds/birt.tld
  

  
   
  http://www.tonbeller.com/wcf
  
   /WEB-INF/wcf/wcf-tags.tld
  
 
  
 
  http://www.tonbeller.com/jpivot
  
   /WEB-INF/jpivot/jpivot-tags.tld
  
 
 

In part 2 of this tutorial we'll integrate the Viewer into the UI.