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

Reports are written in JSON. XML reports are also supported for backward compatibility.

In the your first pivot table article you learned about how the report object can be used to visualize a pivot table based on JSON data. We defined report object properties such as data from dataSource, rows, columns, and measures from slice. Report objects were also used to connect to JSON, CSV, SQL databases, Microsoft Analysis Services, Pentaho Mondrian, and Elasticsearch in previous articles of the documentation.

This set of articles focuses on how to configure properties besides the data source in a report.

A report object has many properties – all possible aspects of pivot table and pivot chart configuration can be set via a report object. The component supports saving and loading reports.

Report configuration

Report properties are logically divided into the parts. Follow the tutorials to configure each part:

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

If the data contains date and time values, check out the date and time formatting tutorial.

The simplest report

The simplest report consists of only the data source definition.

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

{
	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 an 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 must also be encoded as UTF-8.
2. If you are not able to change the header of your HTML file, you can embed Flexmonster in a separate JS file and specify UTF-8 encoding when referencing it.

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