Getting ready

Create a report with three list objects. Define the list columns as follows:

Define appropriate grouping, sorting, and aggregation for all the list objects. Make sure that all objects use different queries.

How to do it...

How it works...

We saw how to define conditional variables and use them as style variables in the 'Conditional formatting' recipe. In this recipe, we are checking how conditional variables can be used with the conditional blocks.

A conditional block is a useful component that allows you to show certain objects in a certain condition. While condition styling and rendering are for finer control, conditional blocks are useful for coarse actions like showing/hiding whole object and switching between objects.

Here, all list objects use different queries. So, each query subject will have only the required columns. Depending on the prompt selection, only one of those queries will be fired and will bring back appropriate columns.

It was possible to have just one list object and one query subject with all columns, and hide/show columns are required. This will be done using conditional styling that you already learnt. However, the purpose of this recipe is to introduce you to conditional blocks. Now you can be creative and use the conditional blocks in real life scenarios. One such example can be, showing a 'No data' message when query returns no rows.

Please note that we checked for the 'Use value' in condition variable (paramValue) whereas we showed the 'Display value' (paramDisplayValue) in header. This topic was discussed in Chapter 1.

There's more...

It is good practice to define something to be displayed for the 'Other' condition of the conditional variable. Do not keep the block empty for any condition, unless that is the requirement.

Conditional block finds its application in many scenarios. For example, showing certain warnings like 'No records found' or displaying summary or detailed report depending on the user's choice.