Presents your 
JAVA E-NEWSLETTER for October 7, 2002

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CREATE EXCEL-FORMATTED DATA

Until recently, the most common way to create a Microsoft Excel file in
a Java application was to create a comma separated values (CSV) file in 
a servlet or JSP and return it to the browser as MIME-type, text/csv. The
browser would then call Excel and the CSV would be displayed.

There is now a project that provides Java developers with a real tool
for creating Excel files. It's the most mature part of a new Jakarta
project named Poor Obfuscation Implementation (POI). The Excel 
component of POI is named Horrible Spreadsheet Format (HSSF).

While HSSF provides many different ways of interacting with the engine,
the one we'll focus on is the easy high-level user API.

Here's a simple example that creates a matrix of values in an Excel
sheet:

import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.*;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;

// code run against the jakarta-poi-1.5.0-FINAL-20020506.jar.
public class PoiTest {

    static public void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("foo.xls");
        HSSFWorkbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook();
        HSSFSheet s = wb.createSheet();
        wb.setSheetName(0, "Matrix");
        for(short i=0; i<50; i++) {
            HSSFRow row = s.createRow(i);

            for(short j=0; j<50; j++) {
                HSSFCell cell = row.createCell(j);
                cell.setCellValue(""+i+","+j);
            }
        }
        wb.write(fos);
        fos.close();
    }

}

This code first creates a workbook, gets a single sheet from that
workbook, names it, and then proceeds to write a 50x50 matrix on it. 
This outputs an Excel file named foo.xls, which even opens on an Apple Mac.

The POI project is an exciting new step for Java, bringing Windows
document integration to a new audience and allowing Java developers to 
improve the functionality of their products.

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