What about PDF and excel reporting through Facelets?

[mobwerner]

I have seen that in the reporting module  PDF reporting will be achieved by using Jasper Report Engine or Pentaho engine.

Is there a reason why the old approach (SEAM 2 , facelets with iText) is abandoned?

I know iText licence has been changed but the above two reporting engines will face the same problem with iText as they use iText under the hood. They are both stucked with the version of iText under the LGPL.

Having this pdf and excel functionality and the ease of development which it provided (especially if you use the combo JSF ,Facelets already), has been very good for the adoption of SEAM 2 within our organization.

Are there any plans on implementing this good old feature in the reports module?

Maybe, one could have two implementations (one with the old iText version, one with a new iText version, so organization can decide if they want to pay for the functionality provided by the new iText version) and the reports module can be delivered only with the old iText version.

Werner Jacobs

[lightguard]

If someone would like to implement it, go for it. We've had comments from both sides of the fence about the Facelets templating for PDF and Excel being a good thing. The hardest part about doing this is finding a good way (the way it was done is Seam2 was not good) to get a hold of a FacesContext if you're not in a request (async) or not using JSF. Another implementation based on JSF would be a welcomed addition from the the community though.