# A different approach to Jasper Reports in Rails

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-different-approach-to-jasper-reports-in-rails/130459>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 28, 2008, 1:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-different-approach-to-jasper-reports-in-rails/130459 "2008-02-28T13:27:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![guyb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@guyb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/guyb)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2008, 1:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-different-approach-to-jasper-reports-in-rails/130459/1 "2008-02-28T13:27:00Z")

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Hi All,

I have several intranet applications running on different mongrel  
servers.  
I want a certain user to be able to design, using iReport, a few  
report designs based on XML data from the rails apps.  
This user should save these templates to a central location UNC file  
based path. The user will publish the report to a Report DB table  
that has three (at least) fields: name, path, datasource.

To run the report I want a user to click on a link in a Rails produced  
page which downloads a the Report record as XML with a different  
mimetype | name | content-type, ie  
  
foo  
\server\share\report-x.jasper(or jrxml)  
[http://server/app/controller/action](http://server/app/controller/action)

Jasper Reports will be on each local machine.

I want the browser to spawn an external app because it has been told  
to do so for this type of file. The spawned app (maybe local ruby  
batch code or java) will take the report template path and datasource  
path and generate the report locally and present it with JRViewer or  
similar.

This local app spawning bit is what I’m not certain of. I think I  
will need to create some Java classes.  
Suggestions anyone?

Ta Guy