What is a report?

A report is a definition of what data should be shown in the component and how it will be visualized.

Reports are in JSON format. XML reports are also supported in terms of backward compatibility.

You are already familiar with the report object thanks to Your first pivot table article where the report object was used to visualize pivot table based on JSON data. There were defined such report object properties as data from dataSource, rows, columns and measures from slice. Also, report objects were used to connect to JSON, CSV, SQL databases, Microsoft Analysis Services, Pentaho Mondrian and icCube in the previous articles of the documentation.

Now it is time to understand what else except the data source configuration can be defined in reports.

Report object has many properties. Actually, all the possible aspects of pivot tables and pivot charts configuration can be set via report object. The component supports saving reports and loading of previously saved ones.

Report parts

Report properties can be divided into the logical parts. Check our tutorials about each part:

• data source*
• slice
• options
• number formatting
• conditional formatting
• localization

*Only the part that describes data source is the required one in reports. Others are optional.

The simplest report

The simplest report consists only of the data source definition.

Let’s see how the simplest report in JSON format that defines connection to the static CSV file looks like :

{
	dataSource: {
		filename: "data.csv"
	}
}

This is how the above report is set in new Flexmonster():

<div id="pivotContainer">The component will appear here</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="flexmonster/flexmonster.js"></script>

<script>
	var pivot = new Flexmonster({
		container: "pivotСontainer",
		toolbar: true,
		report: {
			dataSource: {
				filename: "data.csv"
			}
		},
		licenseKey: "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX"
	});
</script>

Open on JSFiddle.

How to display non-English characters correctly

If you use the alphabet with special characters it is necessary to set UTF-8 encoding. There are two ways to do this:

1. Specify the encoding for your HTML page to UTF-8 using the content-type HTTP header or the corresponding meta tag:

   <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

   Content from the database or static report files also must be encoded as UTF-8.
2. In case you are not able to change the content of your HTML file, you can embed Flexmonster Component in a separate JS file with specified UTF-8 encoding.

   <script src="yourfile.js" charset="UTF-8"></script>