jxls-me

Easily export excel files using Java JXLS.

Why?

Create and export excel templates using Java should be easier than Apache POI looks like.

Getting Started

Assuming we have a Java collection of jedi objects that we want to output into Excel. The Jedi class look like this

public class Jedi {

    private String name;
    private java.util.Date birthDate;
    private BigDecimal payment;
    private String lightSaberColor;
}

To use JXLS to output this object collection into an Excel you'll need to do the following:

Add required JXLS libraries to your project

The easiest way to add JXLS libraries to our project is to use Maven and specify the required librarie in your project build configuration file. See our pom.xml.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jxls</groupId>
    <artifactId>jxls</artifactId>
    <version>2.2.6</version>
</dependency>

Create an Excel template using a special markup

Jxls supports Apache JEXL as an expression language that can be used in an excel template to refer to java object properties and methods. The object must be available in Jxls context under a certain key. To output the jedi name in a cell we can put the following text in the cell ${jedi.name}. Here we just surrounded Jexl expression with ${ and }. We assume that in the context there is an Jedi object under the jedi key.

The property notation is configurable so you may decide to use for example [[jedi.name]] as a property notation. See Jxls Expression Language for more details on how to do it.

The final template for the example to output a list of Jedi objects can be downloaded here.

On our template cells in row 4 we refer to the jedi object properties using JEXL expressions as described above.

Cell A1 contains an excel comment with the following text jx:area(lastCell="D4"). It defines the root area of our template to be A1:D4.

A comment to A4 cell defines Jxls Each-Command with the following comment text jx:each(items="jedis" var="jedi" lastCell="D4"). The Each-Command will iterate the collection of objects under jedis key in Jxls context and place each individual collection item into the context under jedi key (defined by var attribute). The body area of the Each-Command is A4:D4 (defined by the lastCell attribute) and it will be cloned and processed with each new Jedi object in the context.

Use JXLS API to process the prepared template

At JediExport class you can see how to use JXLS API to process the excel template

public void exportJediExcelUsingNewTemplate() throws IOException {
		try(InputStream is = Jedi.class.getResourceAsStream("jedi_template.xls")) {
			try (OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("target/jedi_template.xls")) {
				Context context = new Context();
				context.putVar("jedis", jedis);
				JxlsHelper.getInstance().processTemplate(is, os, context);
			}
		}
	}

Here we are loading the template from the classpath resource jedi_template.xls. And the target excel file will be written to target/jedi_template.xls.

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The final template to output a list of Jedi objects can be downloaded here and looks like this:

![alt text][logo] [logo]: https://github.com/andreybleme/jxls-me/blob/master/img/jedi-template.png "Jedi Template"