Servlet excel problems ...urgent help needed Pls. (MARK any help?)

[kumar raju]

i need to generate Excel , when user clicks on icon in browser....
in servlet i am using this code.. to generate Excel
response.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel");
response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + "test.xls");

PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();
pw.println(" \t sub1 \t \t \t \t \t sub2\t \t \t \t");
....
the problem is ..once i click on icon it launches excel appliaction, but could not open the file ...(says file is not found)...but i can save and see the data...(the problem is only with direct opening of the file)...
any help?
[ October 10, 2003: Message edited by: kumar raju ]
[ October 10, 2003: Message edited by: kumar raju ]
[ October 10, 2003: Message edited by: kumar raju ]

[Kripal Singh]

i am not sure you are using the correct code or not . try using the code as shown in sample servlet below

public class TestExcel extends HttpServlet {
/** Creates new TestExcel */
public TestExcel() {
}
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
throws ServletException, IOException {
doPost(req, res);
}
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
throws ServletException, IOException {
PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();
StringBuffer result = new StringBuffer();
res.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel");
result.append("1\t2\t3\t4\t5\n");
result.append("A\tB\tC\tD\tE\n");
result.append("A\nB\nC\nD\nE\n");
out.println( result.toString() );

}
} 
  

hth
[ October 10, 2003: Message edited by: Kripal Singh ]

[Mike Curwen]

The other option you might try (it's worked for me with great success) is to introduce an intermediary step...

Instead of the click invoking a servlet which generates a file that is instantly streamed back to the browser, instead have that link create a comma-seperated file on your server, and make sure it's got a *.csv extension. Then present the user with a 2nd link that is the 'download' link.

The link to serve this file will cause pretty much any version of IE past 5.0 to open Excel as the default application for files of type *.csv

This gets around the nastiness of having to set content-types, application mime stuff, and not to mention streaming a file back through the response.

[Jaime Garcia]

I had a problem like this one, if you have no-cache and you select to open the file, the browser has to save it in a temp file, but no-cache erase it.
Hope this helps

[Michael Fitzmaurice]

If you want to create the Excel content as something other than a comma or tab separated file, there is a pure Java API for creating and manipulating Excel binaries under the Jakarta project:
http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/hssf/index.html