Question

Yet another custom ColdFusion/Excel question

Asked by: douetja

I am using the custom CFX_Query2Excel and CFX_Excel2Query tags to write and read data from and to Excel. That's fine when value placement is fairly trivial (consecutive rows and columns). However, I have a customer who has a highly customized Excel file that is used as a form rather than a spreadsheet. Data is truly "shotgunned" all over the place.

My need then is to take (say) field0.value and put it in cell b6, field1.value in cell g19, etc. I suspect one way to do this is to write a lot of XML code. Another seems to be this: I found a nice component called cfHSSF at http://cfhssf.riaforge.org/ that is promising. It makes use of POI to create and modify Excel workbooks and sheets. I'm not having success. Code snippet from the component:

-------------------
      <cffunction name="createSheet" returntype="any" output="no" hint="I create a new sheet">
            <!---
            Sheets need to be created before the workBook creation!
            --->
            <cfargument type="any" name="workbook" default="wb">
            <cfargument type="string" name="sheetName" required="Yes">
            <cfreturn workbook.createSheet(sheetName)>
      </cffunction>
-------------------

My calling code:
-------------------
<cfinvoke component="cfHSSF" method="createSheet" returnvariable="XLSheet" workbook="TestWB" sheetName="TestSheet"></cfinvoke>
-------------------

And finally, the IE8 output:
-------------------
The createSheet method was not found.  
Either there are no methods with the specified method name and argument types, or the createSheet method is overloaded with argument types that ColdFusion cannot decipher reliably. ColdFusion found 0 methods that matched the provided arguments. If this is a Java object and you verified that the method exists, you may need to use the javacast function to reduce ambiguity.  
 
The error occurred in C:\websites\a4kxhc\SSL\cfc\cfExcel.cfc: line 46
 
44 :             <cfargument type="any" name="workbook" default="wb">
45 :             <cfargument type="string" name="sheetName" required="Yes">
46 :             <cfreturn workbook.createSheet(sheetName)>
47 :       </cffunction>
48 : <!---
-------------------

I have contacted the author, but he seems to be busy, hence I'm here. Have also contacted the hosting company (Hosting.com), but no answers so far.

Regards.

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Asked On
2009-11-03 at 15:05:56ID24869268
Tags

ColdFusion

,

Excel

,

cfcomponents

,

CFX_Query2Excel

,

CFX_Excel2Query

Topics

ColdFusion Application Server

,

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software

,

Cold Fusion Markup Language

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: duncancummingPosted on 2009-11-04 at 11:31:42ID: 25742959

can you call other functions in the cfHSSF component?  I'm guessing it maybe has an init() method for example.

 

by: douetjaPosted on 2009-11-04 at 11:41:38ID: 25743054

Yes, it does, and that actually seems to work. It's in my code just above the line I posted. I've tried a few other functions, and all fail when they actually attempt to call workbook methods.

I also tried creating it as an object
---------------
<cfobject name="objExcel" component="cfc.cfHSSF">
<cfinvoke component="#objExcel#" method="init" returnvariable="XLDocs"></cfinvoke>
<cfinvoke component="#objExcel#" method="createSheet" returnvariable="XLSheet" workbook="TestWB" sheetName="TestSheet"></cfinvoke>
--------------

but with the same results.

I got a response from the hosting company this morning, telling me they're running version poi-2.5.1-final-20040804.jar, which is of course 5 years old. They offered to update to a newer version, so I'm waiting for that at the moment.

I am a newbie with HSSF, and also relatively new to cf components, so I could still certainly be doing something wrong.

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-11-18 at 15:19:12ID: 25856105

> They offered to update to a newer version, so I'm waiting for that at the moment.

Be careful about updating jars used by CF, as it could break other things.

Anyway, the structure of that cfc was a little odd/non-standard.  Seems:

1) You call init() to create a new _workbook_ object  in memory (not an instance of the CFC).
2) Use the returned workbook object when adding a new sheet
3) Use it again to save the workbook to a file. Don't forget to close() it or it will be corrupted.

Note, I'm assuming you have createObject(..) access. If you don't, you won't be able to use the cfc anyway.

<!--- do NOT call init() here --->
<cfset CFHSSF = createObject("component", "CFHssf")>
<!--- get a workbook object --->
<cfset wb = CFHSSF.init()>
<cfset sheet = CFHSSF.createSheet(workbook=wb, sheetName="MySheet")>
<cfset output = CFHSSF.createBook(workbook=wb, bookName="c:\myWorkbook.xls")>
<!--- MUST close the wb or it will be corrupted --->
<cfset output.close()>

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-11-18 at 15:19:52ID: 25856109

> <cfset CFHSSF = createObject("component", "CFHssf")>

... obviously update the cfc path to match your folder structure.

 

by: douetjaPosted on 2009-11-19 at 06:34:59ID: 25860695

Thanks for your comments - in the end I decided to simply use HSSF directly (as you show above) rather than through a component interface, and it actually worked out quite nicely.  A little sample of my working code to read in a file as a template, write things to it, then write it out as a new file (so that my template remains blank) for anyone looking at this question follows:

-------------------------------------------------------------
<cfquery name="qSite"...>
...
</cfquery>

<cfset myFileStream = createObject("java", "java.io.FileInputStream").init(#ExpandPath('./Excel/Templates/Audit.xls')#)>
<cfset wb = createObject("java","org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFWorkbook").init(myFileStream)>
<cfset wbsheet = wb.getSheetAt(0)>
<cfset wbsheet.getRow(3).getCell(1).setCellValue(qSite.info_SiteName)>
.....
<!-- write out a new workbook based on the Audit.xls template --->
<cfset myFileOut = createObject("java","java.io.FileOutputStream").init(#ExpandPath('./Excel/Chicago/ChicagoAudit.xls')#)>
<cfset wb.write(vr)>
<cfset vr.close()>
-------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks, agx, for your attention - not the first time you've written something that's helped me!

 

by: douetjaPosted on 2009-11-19 at 06:38:08ID: 25860722

In my previous post, the last two lines, "vr" should read "myFileOut". Sorry!

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-11-19 at 13:40:46ID: 25865334

Welcome :)

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