Java and Excel
October 20, 2006
I needed to read from and write to Excel-workbooks with a Java application, which proved to be pretty easy.
The answer is HSSF from the Jakarta POI project. POI provides access to Microsoft Format files and HSSF (short for “Horrible SpreadSheet Format”, funnily enough) enables you to work with Excel ‘97-2002 files. I haven’t tried using it on the new 2007 Excel format, that would be a funny little proof of concept for the future.
So, just download the library and start programming. It’s very easy, but may require a lot of customization in order to get the data formatted the way you want. Nice code snippets are given to you as examples on the Busy Developers’ Guide to HSSF Features page.
Great stuff!
