Creating Custom Formatters

 

Overview

Yellowfin reports provide a great way of formatting data in a report column via Column Formatting. There are numerous predefined formatters that let you display values in unique ways besides text, numbers, date, etc, but the application also allows users to create their own custom formatters. This is done by formatting data types based on a user-defined Java class, which allows for parsing the returned database value and transforming it into another format. This guide will teach you how to do just that.

 

 

Implementation Overview

Implementation of a custom formatter can be done by extending Yellowfin’s CustomFormatter class and by implementing all the required functions. This is covered in detail in this section.

 

 

Guide Contents

This guide is broken into the following sections:

• Basics: The basic process of creating a custom formatter for Yellowfin reports. Start here if you are new to coding Yellowfin plug-ins.

• Custom formatter prerequisites: Ensure that your environment meets the software requirements for creating formatters.

• Custom formatter definition: The core functions required to code a custom formatter.

• Embedded HTML: Learn about including embedding HTML in customized values.

• Formatter package: Once your custom formatter has been defined, learn how to package it for Yellowfin.

• Code examples: This guide includes some coding examples that create custom formatters.

 

For further reference, see the custom formatter appendix.