Swing Hacks

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Chapter 3, Tables and Trees

#25 Export Table Data to an Excel Spreadsheet

HACK

The createSampleTable( ) method is something you could rewrite to insert

your own types and values easily. In fact, because it returns the name of the

table you’ve created, you could create many different tables in your data-

base and test out how the model handles them. Or, use a loop to create lots

of rows and see how long it takes to load them.

At any rate, when run, the

TestJDBCTable produces a JFrame with the data-

base table’s contents, as seen in Figure 3-9.

H A C K

#25

Export Table Data to an Excel Spreadsheet Hack #25

I don’t want an entire spreadsheet API, I just want to get a table of values into

Excel.

Most corporate intranet applications require interfacing with standard office

software, which usually means Microsoft Word and Excel. Interfacing with

Microsoft products can be tricky business. Whole suites of products have

been created just to address this issue. One of the most commonly requested

features is generating a report from the data in a

JTable. You could use a

library like Poi (http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/) to read and write Excel files

natively, but most of the time that’s overkill—you probably don’t need to

support Excel formulas or complicated formatting. All most users really

want to do is dump tabular data into a file that will open in Excel with a

double-click. And with a little bit of cleverness, you can do just that.

statement.close( );

return "EMPLOYEES";

}

}

Figure 3-9. JTable populated from a database

Example 3-13. Testing the JDBC-based table (continued)