Reputation: 561
I am trying to read data stored in a Excel sheet using Java POI. I am confused with these two methods because both methods reutrn string value stored in the cell. Could anyone explain the difference between these two methods?
Upvotes: 5
Views: 13696
Reputation: 9313
The important clue is to look @ the documentation and note the different return types.
getRichStringCellValue() returns the type of XSSFRichTextString while getStringCellValue() returns a plain old java String.
You probably only want to use getStringCellValue(), unless you're doing something like copying a spreadsheet and wish to retain any formatting. If that's the case, the XSSRichTextString object that is returned by getRichStringCellValue() will contain any format information like bold or italic.
Upvotes: 11
Reputation: 7076
From Apache's Documentation:
getRichStringCellValue():
get the value of the cell as a string - for numeric cells we throw an exception. For blank cells we return an empty string. For formulaCells that are not string Formulas, we throw an exception.
getStringCellValue():
get the value of the cell as a string - for numeric cells we throw an exception.
Upvotes: 6