CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaexcel
user130532
user130532

Reputation:

Generating excel documents programmatically

Has anyone used a Java based library for generating excel documents? Preferably support for 2003?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3223

Answers (8)

Luis Herrería
Luis Herrería

Reputation: 101

You can generate an excel file with a VBS and then cal the script from java like this:

String script = "your_VBS_Name.vbs"
String cmd = "D:\\YourPath" + script;
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

to create the script is really simple

open notepad and follow the next example:

Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
objExcel.Visible = True

Set objWorkbook = objExcel.Workbooks.Add()
objWorkbook.SaveAs("D:\yourExcel.xls")

objExcel.Quit

and then save it as your_VBS_Name.vbs

Thats it!

Upvotes: 0

Jarekczek
Jarekczek

Reputation: 7866

I do it with Jacob as a general java and COM solution. However in my reading Jacob does not handle pretty well multiple calls (say millions of calls) and I needed to patch it a bit. These patches were not accepted by Jacob maintainer.

Anyway Jacob is open source (LGPL) and after patching it I have a production environment running for years yet.

After connecting to Excel with COM, you use standard Excel api to process documents. First you try how it works with VBS (VBScript Language Reference), then implement in java.

Upvotes: 1

liya
liya

Reputation: 792

You can also try SmartXLS for java, it have more functions than poi and jexcelapi,and it is a commercial product.

http://www.smartxls.com/indexj.htm

Upvotes: 1

pjp
pjp

Reputation: 17629

If you don't need fancy headings then just output CSV.

Upvotes: 2

DJClayworth
DJClayworth

Reputation: 26846

I'm currently working with Apache POI, ( http://poi.apache.org/index.html ) which is very comprehensive. The 2003 file format version is still in beta, but seems to work well enough. I'm not exercising it's power very much, just straightforward reads and writes of Excel, but it seems reliable.

Upvotes: 6

devstuff
devstuff

Reputation: 8387

A formatted HTML table will import correctly, but it would be better to use the Excel XML format from the Excel 2003 XML Toolbox for more advanced needs (multiple worksheets, formulas, etc).

Upvotes: 1

Trampas Kirk
Trampas Kirk

Reputation: 1446

JExcelApi

I've used it personally for a report that is currently in production. It's a fairly decent library with sufficient docs, and it's open source.

It works very well, but has a few gotchas you should be aware of. None of them are deal breakers, just dictate how a few things should be done. Just be sure to read the FAQ. It will explain them and tell you how to avoid them.

Upvotes: 1

Eric
Eric

Reputation: 19863

Whenever I have to do this I ask myself if one big html table would be enough.

much of the time it is. You can simply write html tags and label it as a .xls file. Excel will open it correctly

Upvotes: 6

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