Adding cell with quotePrefix in POI

Question

I want to add a cell in xlsx workbooks sheet containing the quote prefix, and i am trying to create that sheet using POI library. How do I add this type of cell

I found a reference to this with CTXf.setQuotePrefix(boolean quotePrefix) on maven central, but dont know how to add this to the XSSFCell

I have tried using below code

XSSFCell cell=row.createCell(cellIndex);
CTXfImpl ctxf= new CTXfImpl(XmlObject.Factory.newInstance().schemaType());
ctxf.setQuotePrefix(true);
cell.getCTCell().set(ctxf);
cell.setCellValue(data);

getting exception

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.openxmlformats.schemas.spreadsheetml.x2006.main.impl.CTXfImpl.setQuotePrefix(Unknown Source) 

Can anyone help me with this

Answer 1

The CTXf and also the quotePrefix property is part of the XSSFCellStyle and not the XSSFCell.

So we must create a XSSFCellStyle, set the quotePrefix there and then apply this XSSFCellStyle to the XSSFCell.

import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.*;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.*;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

class WriteQuotePrefix {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  try {

   Workbook wb = new XSSFWorkbook();

   CellStyle style = wb.createCellStyle();
   ((XSSFCellStyle)style).getCoreXf().setQuotePrefix(true);

   Sheet sheet = wb.createSheet();
   Row row = sheet.createRow(0);
   Cell cell = row.createCell(0);
   cell.setCellStyle(style);
   cell.setCellValue("1234");

   FileOutputStream fileOut = new FileOutputStream("WriteQuotePrefix.xlsx");
   wb.write(fileOut);

  } catch (IOException ioex) {
  }
 }
}