Question

Reading an Excel File using cfquery.

Asked by: jerseycat10

I am doing my best to try to read an Excel file using ColdFusion.

The problem is, if I try to load this data:

LOGICAL_CIRCUIT      BUSINESS      BUC
TEST_CIRCUIT      666666      D47147
TEST_CIRCUIT      666666      6666666


I get these results:

 BUC BUSINESS LOGICAL_CIRCUIT
[empty string]  666666  TEST_CIRCUIT  
6666666  666666  TEST_CIRCUIT  

As you can see, the business and logical_circuit fields loaded fine.  However, the buc field, because it contained a mixture of numbers and strings, only will load the numeric values, and the string 'D47147' is converted to empty string.

This is all in spite of me trying various combinations of data formatting in the spreadsheet.  Currently, everything is set as text.

Here is my code:

<cfquery name="qryXLSdata" datasource="psm_excel">
      SELECT logical_circuit, business, buc FROM [PSM_TEMPLATE_1$]
      IN 'C:\the\path\to\#cffile.serverFile#' 'EXCEL 5.0;'
</cfquery>

psm_excel is a dummy datasource that points to an empty access file.




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Asked On
2008-08-13 at 06:58:34ID23644645
Tags

Adobe

,

ColdFusion

,

8

,

sql excel

Topics

ColdFusion Application Server

,

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software

,

Cold Fusion Markup Language

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: mtgenusPosted on 2008-08-13 at 14:40:59ID: 22225888

If you are using SQL server then use OPENROWSET to read the excel file, for example:

<cfquery name="qryXLSdata" datasource="your_db_name">
 SELECT logical_circuit, business, buc
 FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0', 'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\the\path\to\#cffile.serverFile#;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1',
            'SELECT *
             FROM       [Sheet1$]
             Where LOGICAL_CIRCUIT is not null ' )
</cfquery>


If you are not using SQL server then you should be able to use coldfusion to save the excel file as a text file and parse it.

Lastly, you can download and use a custom tag, such as cfx_excel2query, which works pretty good, as well.

Thanks
the sheet name has to match the name of the excel file sheet (Sheet1$), also, you can select specific rows/columns by adding the range after the sheet name. For example, [Sheet1$A2:I50000]

Hope this helps

 

by: jerseycat10Posted on 2008-08-15 at 06:35:10ID: 22238015

Thanks for your input.

However, I am getting the following error below.

Any ideas?

I am using SQL Server 2005 and ColdFusion 8.0.

Database Query. 
[Macromedia][SequeLink JDBC Driver][ODBC Socket][Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Syntax error in FROM clause. 
 
The error occurred in C:\path\to\code\enter_upload.cfm: line 59
 
57 : 
58 : SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET( 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
59 : 'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\path\to\spreadsheet\#cffile.serverFile#','SELECT * FROM [PSM_TEMPLATE_1$]')
60 : 
61 : 
                                              
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by: mtgenusPosted on 2008-08-15 at 07:03:28ID: 22238237

Are you using a db on the SQL server for the datasource name in your cfquery tag? If you are using an excel or access dsn it will probably throw an error.

Check the query itself in a query analyzer. Also, you are missing the IMEX=1. That's what is going to prevent the NULL value for the D47147 value in BUC column.

 

by: jerseycat10Posted on 2008-08-15 at 07:11:15ID: 22238285

Thanks, that got me past that error.  

Now I have one more error as below.

Question is, does the path to the spreadsheet have to be relative to the ColdFusion server, or relative to the SQL Server?

The spreadsheet I am referring to is on the same machine as the ColdFusion server, not the SQL server.

Thanks.

Database Query.  
[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]The OLE DB provider "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" for linked server "(null)" reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.  
  
The error occurred in C:\path\to\code\enter_upload.cfm: line 51
 
49 : 		<cfquery name="qryXLSdata" datasource="sql_datasource">
50 : 			SELECT *
51 : 			FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0', 'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\path\to\sheet\#cffile.serverFile#;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1', 
52 : 			'SELECT * FROM [PSM_TEMPLATE_1$]')
53 : 		</cfquery> 
 
 
                                              
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by: mtgenusPosted on 2008-08-15 at 07:51:19ID: 22238669

relative to the sql server,  but you can use \\Servername\Sharename\Path\Filename for the path in openrowset to cross servers.

If you still get the same error here are some posts regarding it:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=505236&SiteID=1

 

by: jerseycat10Posted on 2008-08-15 at 09:32:28ID: 22239596

Finally got it working!  I had a bunch of problems using the solution over the network share, so using CF I copy the file to the SQL server first, and then I use your solution.

Thank you very much!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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