#2 is a clever solution from MS. The thing we have found occassionaly
troublesome with #2 is that the spread sheet remains an HTML file. So if
a user downloads your table data and makes edits to it and then saves it
the file stays as an HTML file. If you want it converted to a binary XLS
file then you have to ask them to do a "Save As" which is not something
users are accusomted to. The same is true of the XML and CSV solutions as
well. POI (and its commercial equivalents) are the only way to get around
this. These solutions speak binary Excel.
By the way, I should have added a fifth way to save to Excel. If you know
you are running inside of IE 6 you can write JavaScript code that loads
the Excel COM object, then insert your info into the spread sheet cells
and then save it to the local disk. From within JavaScript you can pretty
much do anything that the user can do at the keyboard.
--Marty
--- Will Glass-Husain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've played with this extensively. The short answer is "yes", but not
> with
> DisplayTag. You should create a web page that is a cleanly formatted
> table
> of row/column data, with nothing else in the page. (Other stuff, like
> paragraphs or subtables confuse the row/column mapping algorithm and
> cause
> Excel to be idiosyncratic about formatting). Use CSS to format the
> cells
> with colors, borders, etc. Put this in a style sheet or at the top of
> the
> page to set landscape mode.
>
> <style>
> @page
> {margin:0.5in .75in 0.5in .75in;
> mso-header-margin:.5in;
> mso-footer-margin:.5in;
> mso-page-orientation:landscape;}
> </style>
>
> You'll also need to set the content type to Excel (directing the browser
> to
> open Excel automatically). Do something like this:
>
> response.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel;charset=iso-8859-1");
> response.addHeader("Content-disposition","attachment; filename=" +
> "export.xls" );
>
> Incidentally, there's actually 4 ways for a webapp to output an Excel
> spreadsheet, not just two:
>
> (1) Output a comma separated set of numbers like DisplayTag (with the
> appropriate content type)
>
> (2) Output a HTML row/column table. Use CSS attributes to define
> formatting, and embedded XML (Excel2000+) to define document
> characteristics
> like sheet names. Most standard CSS attributes work, plus Microsoft has
> defined a number of special ones for things like Excel formatting).
> Works
> for Excel 97+.
>
> (3) Output an XML file in Excel 2003's XML format. (won't work for
> earlier
> versions).
>
> (4) Use POI (or one of the commercial products) to insert data into an
> existing XLS file used as a template, then send this binary file back to
> the
> user.
>
> There's pros and cons to each of these. I usually do #2. It surprises
> me
> that DisplayTag doesn't (this must mean the formatting is lost when you
> output to Excel).
>
> Best,
> WILL
>
> > >
> > > On May 22, 2004, at 11:30 AM, Phil Ardaugh wrote:
> > >
> > > > Is it possible to pass to Excel certain formatting
> > > > such as landscape format using the display tag?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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