How to read and write excel file

Question

I want to read and write an Excel file from Java with 3 columns and N rows, printing one string in each cell. Can anyone give me simple code snippet for this? Do I need to use any external lib or does Java have built-in support for it?

I want to do the following:

for(i=0; i <rows; i++)
     //read [i,col1] ,[i,col2], [i,col3]

for(i=0; i<rows; i++)
    //write [i,col1], [i,col2], [i,col3]

Answer 1

If you need to do anything more with office documents in Java, go for POI as mentioned.

For simple reading/writing an excel document like you requested, you can use the CSV format (also as mentioned):

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class CsvWriter {
 public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {

  String fileName = "test.xls";

  PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(fileName));
  out.println("a,b,c,d");
  out.println("e,f,g,h");
  out.println("i,j,k,l");
  out.close();

  BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fileName));
  String line = null;
  while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {

   Scanner scanner = new Scanner(line);
   String sep = "";
   while (scanner.hasNext()) {
    System.out.println(sep + scanner.next());
    sep = ",";
   }
  }
  in.close();
 }
}

Answer 2

Sure , you will find the code below useful and easy to read and write. This is a util class which you can use in your main method and then you are good to use all methods below.

     public class ExcelUtils {
     private static XSSFSheet ExcelWSheet;
     private static XSSFWorkbook ExcelWBook;
     private static XSSFCell Cell;
     private static XSSFRow Row;
     File fileName = new File("C:\\Users\\satekuma\\Pro\\Fund.xlsx");
     public void setExcelFile(File Path, String SheetName) throws Exception                

    try {
        FileInputStream ExcelFile = new FileInputStream(Path);
        ExcelWBook = new XSSFWorkbook(ExcelFile);
        ExcelWSheet = ExcelWBook.getSheet(SheetName);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw (e);
    }

}


      public static String getCellData(int RowNum, int ColNum) throws Exception {

    try {
        Cell = ExcelWSheet.getRow(RowNum).getCell(ColNum);
        String CellData = Cell.getStringCellValue();
        return CellData;
    } catch (Exception e) {

        return "";

    }

}
public static void setCellData(String Result, int RowNum, int ColNum, File Path) throws Exception {

    try {
        Row = ExcelWSheet.createRow(RowNum - 1);
        Cell = Row.createCell(ColNum - 1);
        Cell.setCellValue(Result);
        FileOutputStream fileOut = new FileOutputStream(Path);
        ExcelWBook.write(fileOut);
        fileOut.flush();
        fileOut.close();
    } catch (Exception e) {

        throw (e);

    }

}

}

Answer 3

Another way to read/write Excel files is to use Windmill. It provides a fluent API to process Excel and CSV files.

Import data

try (Stream<Row> rowStream = Windmill.parse(FileSource.of(new FileInputStream("myFile.xlsx")))) {
  rowStream
    // skip the header row that contains the column names
    .skip(1)
    .forEach(row -> {
      System.out.println(
        "row n°" + row.rowIndex()
        + " column 'User login' value : " + row.cell("User login").asString()
        + " column n°3 number value : " + row.cell(2).asDouble().value() // index is zero-based
      );
    });
}

Export data

Windmill
  .export(Arrays.asList(bean1, bean2, bean3))
  .withHeaderMapping(
    new ExportHeaderMapping<Bean>()
      .add("Name", Bean::getName)
      .add("User login", bean -> bean.getUser().getLogin())
  )
  .asExcel()
  .writeTo(new FileOutputStream("Export.xlsx"));

Answer 4

You can also consider JExcelApi. I find it better designed than POI. There's a tutorial here.

Answer 5

You can not read & write same file in parallel(Read-write lock). But, we can do parallel operations on temporary data(i.e. Input/output stream). Write the data to file only after closing the input stream. Below steps should be followed.

• Open the file to Input stream
• Open the same file to an Output Stream
• Read and do the processing
• Write contents to output stream.
• Close the read/input stream, close file
• Close output stream, close file.

Apache POI - read/write same excel example

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.sql.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;

import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.Cell;
import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.Row;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFSheet;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFWorkbook;


public class XLSXReaderWriter {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        try {
            File excel = new File("D://raju.xlsx");
            FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(excel);
            XSSFWorkbook book = new XSSFWorkbook(fis);
            XSSFSheet sheet = book.getSheetAt(0);

            Iterator<Row> itr = sheet.iterator();

            // Iterating over Excel file in Java
            while (itr.hasNext()) {
                Row row = itr.next();

                // Iterating over each column of Excel file
                Iterator<Cell> cellIterator = row.cellIterator();
                while (cellIterator.hasNext()) {

                    Cell cell = cellIterator.next();

                    switch (cell.getCellType()) {
                    case Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING:
                        System.out.print(cell.getStringCellValue() + "\t");
                        break;
                    case Cell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC:
                        System.out.print(cell.getNumericCellValue() + "\t");
                        break;
                    case Cell.CELL_TYPE_BOOLEAN:
                        System.out.print(cell.getBooleanCellValue() + "\t");
                        break;
                    default:

                    }
                }
                System.out.println("");
            }

            // writing data into XLSX file
            Map<String, Object[]> newData = new HashMap<String, Object[]>();
            newData.put("1", new Object[] { 1d, "Raju", "75K", "dev",
                    "SGD" });
            newData.put("2", new Object[] { 2d, "Ramesh", "58K", "test",
                    "USD" });
            newData.put("3", new Object[] { 3d, "Ravi", "90K", "PMO",
                    "INR" });

            Set<String> newRows = newData.keySet();
            int rownum = sheet.getLastRowNum();

            for (String key : newRows) {
                Row row = sheet.createRow(rownum++);
                Object[] objArr = newData.get(key);
                int cellnum = 0;
                for (Object obj : objArr) {
                    Cell cell = row.createCell(cellnum++);
                    if (obj instanceof String) {
                        cell.setCellValue((String) obj);
                    } else if (obj instanceof Boolean) {
                        cell.setCellValue((Boolean) obj);
                    } else if (obj instanceof Date) {
                        cell.setCellValue((Date) obj);
                    } else if (obj instanceof Double) {
                        cell.setCellValue((Double) obj);
                    }
                }
            }

            // open an OutputStream to save written data into Excel file
            FileOutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(excel);
            book.write(os);
            System.out.println("Writing on Excel file Finished ...");

            // Close workbook, OutputStream and Excel file to prevent leak
            os.close();
            book.close();
            fis.close();

        } catch (FileNotFoundException fe) {
            fe.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException ie) {
            ie.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

Apache POI can do this for you. Specifically the HSSF module. The quick guide is most useful. Here's how to do what you want - specifically create a sheet and write it out.

Workbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook();
//Workbook wb = new XSSFWorkbook();
CreationHelper createHelper = wb.getCreationHelper();
Sheet sheet = wb.createSheet("new sheet");

// Create a row and put some cells in it. Rows are 0 based.
Row row = sheet.createRow((short)0);
// Create a cell and put a value in it.
Cell cell = row.createCell(0);
cell.setCellValue(1);

// Or do it on one line.
row.createCell(1).setCellValue(1.2);
row.createCell(2).setCellValue(
createHelper.createRichTextString("This is a string"));
row.createCell(3).setCellValue(true);

// Write the output to a file
FileOutputStream fileOut = new FileOutputStream("workbook.xls");
wb.write(fileOut);
fileOut.close();