CODEWITHSUNDEEP
springexceldownloadfile-extensioncsv
Niklas Rosencrantz
Niklas Rosencrantz

Reputation: 26642

File extension for tab-delimited values that can be opened by Excel?

I'm outputting a tab-delimited file from my webapp that should be opened in Excel. The problem is that .xls seems not good for opening and editing it, then Excel required some other format, and if I change the extension to .tsv then the file becomes unknown for Excel (on Windows 7) and .csv is for comma-separated. Can you advice me which the file extension should be?

This is the code that outputs the file and it works. It's just that I should choose the most suitable extension for tab-separated values. 

@RequestMapping(value = "/export", method = RequestMethod.GET)
@ResponseBody
public ModelAndView export(HttpServletResponse response) {
    try {
        String str = "";
        Iterator<Individual> iterator = customerAccountService.getAllIndividuals().iterator();
        while(iterator.hasNext()){
            Individual individual = iterator.next();
            str = str + individual.getId() + "\t" +individual.getIndividualName().getName() + "\t" + individual.getAddress().getStreetName() + "\n";
        }
        InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(str.getBytes());
        IOUtils.copy(is, response.getOutputStream());
        response.setContentType("application/xls");
        response.setHeader("Content-Disposition","attachment; filename=export.tsv");
        response.flushBuffer();
    } catch (IOException ex) {
        //logger.info("Error writing file to output stream. Filename was '" + fileName + "'");
        throw new RuntimeException("IOError writing file to output stream");
    }
    ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView(ViewName.MENU);
    modelAndView.addObject(ObjectName.ADD_FORM, new LoginForm());
    return modelAndView;
}

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1937

Answers (1)

sina
sina

Reputation: 1829

Put

sep=\t

as the first line in your .csv-file (yes, you can name it .csv then). That tells excel what the delimiter character should be.

Note, that actually if you open the .csv with a text editor, it should read like

sep=     (an actual tabulator character here, it's just not visible...)

Upvotes: 8

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