I am using Ben Nadel's POIUtility.cfm to read and write to Excel files. There are some files which I can read very easily using the given code/file. But for some other files, I keep getting an instantiation error. I cannot figure out what's going wrong.
Code:
<cfset arrSheets = objPOI.ReadExcel(
FilePath = ExpandPath( "./File giving error.xls" ),
HasHeaderRow = true
) />
Error:
Object instantiation exception.
An exception occurred while instantiating a Java object. The class
must not be an interface or an abstract class.
I'm using CF10, site hosted locally on IIS. Link to sample file.
Short answer:
The format of the file you are trying to read is too old (Excel 95). POI only supports Excel 97 and later. Unless you really have files in that old format, I would not worry about it.
Given that spreadsheet functions are built into CF 10, you probably do not even need the POIUtility.
Longer answer:
If you look at the end of the stack trace, the "caused by" message explains that the format Excel 95 (BIFF5), is not supported. (It is over twenty years old!). For that file to be compatible with POI, you would need to it with another tool, like Excel, and save it in Excel 97 format (or later).
Caused by: org.apache.poi.hssf.OldExcelFormatException: The supplied spreadsheet seems to be Excel 5.0/7.0 (BIFF5) format. POI only supports BIFF8 format (from Excel versions 97/2000/XP/2003)
As an aside, the POIUtility was originally designed back in the days of ColdFusion 7, because it had no official support for manipulating spreadsheets. However, CF7 did include the POI library. So that component was written to fill the gap. Then along came CF9, which had spreadsheet functions already baked in, so the component became less necessary.
Related
I've just inherited a rather antiquated ColdFusion system (from the Allaire days) which has an application.cfc containing what looks like encrypted code, as follows.
Allaire Cold Fusion Template
Header Size: New VersionÏ{£ z¦7¦¶¸¶ähqؤä8X°É¿Ìò©‰P^qv ßNÊÒ‡ùFÍû'ÉÊE´Žå¿ˆpcíå†óΔ7Žä]±Ï÷f?¼û=Ò“šüù>eÐ×åR™”ÎÓ’Íf# ®ëâéÃYЦ]ÝišE𧵤ˮðÐ4~¿xî)ä˜âÂã&ăXDÂ2e".´§ábðyNN6¡I¨´eiÈ"³zñ¤îu ÍP†7ü#›™ú! ØþFtðêt-I ÏY¤ae~®ç×7,Ä£oâÿPé ;b7é{”_)UM‚ýó#g£Ä'žê
I've never seen this before in an application file. Has anybody? And if it's encoded, how would one un-encode it?
Yes, I've seen this before. Your .cfm and .cfc files were encoded/encrypted using the cfencode.exe utility. Luckily someone wrote a decryption utility for it (my coworker needed it several years ago). Unfortunately I don't know where he downloaded it or obtained a copy, but from doing some online searches, it appears that the utility is called cfdecrypt 2.0.
You can search for it and download it. Hopefully this points you in the right direction and gives a good starting point.
I am from Slovakia, I wouldn't be surprised if most of you haven't heard about it.
However, that causes me a troubles when it comes to reports. We need to have 3 (soon 4) language versions of each report: Slovak is main language, than, Polish and English.
Since pentaho does not support Polish nor Slovak, it is really pain for me to keep these localized.
What I do is:
Create report in Slovak language
Write down all phrases from report
Send phrases to one of our partners to translate
Create its copy in either pl/en directory
Open it in Report Designer and edit every phrase accordingly
Save as another language version
As you can imagine, the process is very time consuming, and error prone. Plus, every time I add new parameter to report or change its data source (which is BeanShell script), I need to do it in 3 separated files. As a result of this, language mutations are usually out of date, way behind main language version.
I have tried to automate it with OneSky and did a python script that does 2 stages:
Stage 1 (extract and upload):
Change *.prpt files sufix to *.zip
Extract phrases from files: ~/datadefinition.xml, ~/layout.xml, ~/styles.xml, ~/datasources/inline-ds.xml
Put those phrases into *.po file
Export *.po file into OneSky
Stage 2 (download and import):
Change *.prpt files sufix to *.zip
Download translated *.po file from OneSky
Run through ~/datadefinition.xml, ~/layout.xml, ~/styles.xml, ~/datasources/inline-ds.xml files and replace original phrases by translated
While this aproach works fine, it doe not translate everything. There are still flaws of this process. I need to go through it every time I do even slightest change in data source of report or fix small mistakes. Even if I just do a small six in SQL code, I need to do it in 3 files. That of course increases chance to mistake be made.
Soo, I was wondering, how are you guys solving this issue with translating of your reports?
I will share very simple method which we are following.
1)create a properties file with key value format for each language for resource labels(for static values)
2)put it into resources folder(report-designer/resources/)
3)Based on the parameter you can specify which properties file to select and you can specify keys into value field so that it can understand which value to display in which language.
4)if you need to convert the data which are coming from database,you have to design data warehouse specify all the mappings,accordingly it can fetch the data.
5)For converting dates and currency symbols or number format you can use inbuilt functions which can handle all this things,i am using mysql and mysql has translation functions which can handle all such things.
it is difficult to explain entire process here, but if you can get and idea from this it can be useful to you.
I am recently trying to change our company's old program. One of the huge rocks in my way is that the old program was made with Borland C++, and it had its own way of connecting to the SQL Server 2000 database.
After 8 years, I'm trying to retire this program. But when I looked at the database, I got freaked out!
The whole database was in a vague language that was supposed to be Persian.
I'll give you a portion of the database converted to SQL Server 2005, so you can see it for yourself. I've spent many days trying to figure out how to decode this data. But so far no results has come out of it.
Link to the sample Database File
So please if you can tell me how to use them in Microsoft C#.net it will be much appreciated.
These are the datatypes used for them:
And this is how it looks:
Thanks a lot.
1) Analyse existing program and original database
Try to figure out how the C++ program stored Persian text in the database. What are the collations defined on the original server, database, and on column level.
Does the C++ program convert the data to be stored and retrieved from the database? If so, find out how.
It may well be that the program displays data in Persian, but does not store it in a compatible way. Or it uses a custom font that supports custom encoding. All this needs to be analyzed.
2) The screen shots looks as if everything Persian is encoded as ASCII characters higher than CHAR(128).
If this a standardized encoding or custom created?
3) To migrate the database, you most likely will need to convert the data mapping original characters to Unicode characters.
First recreate the tables using Unicode-enabled columns (NVARCHAR, NVARCHAR(MAX)) rather than CHAR and VARCHAR, which only support Latin or Extended Latin.
4) Even if you successfully migrated your data, SSMS may not correctly display the stored data due to font settings or OS support.
I summarized the difficulties of displaying Unicode in SSMS on my blog.
But first, you need to investigate the original database and application.
I have seen programs exporting to Excel in two different ways.
Opening Excel and entering data cell by cell (while it is running it looks like a macro at work)
Creating an Excel file on disk and writing the data to the file (like the Export feature in MS Access)
Number 1 is terribly slow and to me it is just plain aweful.
Number 2 is what I need to do. I'm guessing I need some sort of SDK so that I can create Excel files in C++.
Do I need different SDKs for .xls and .xlsx?
Where do I obtain these? (I've tried Googling it but the SDKs I've found looks like they do other things than providing an interface to create Excel files).
When it comes to the runtime, is MS Office a requirement on the PC that needs to create Excel files or do you get a redistributable DLL that you can deploy with your executable?
You can easily do that by means of the XML Excel format. Check the wikipedia about that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#XML_Spreadsheet
This format was introduced in Excel 2002, and it is an easy way to generate a XLS file.
You can also try working with XLS/XLSX files over ODBC or ADO drivers just like databases with a limited usage. You can use some templates if you need formatting or create the files from stratch. Of course you are limited by playing with the field values that way. For styling etc. you will need to use an Excel API like Microsoft's.
I'm doing this via Wt library's WTemplate
In short, I created the excel document I wanted in open office, and save-as excel 2003 (.xml) format.
I then loaded that in google-chrome to make it look pretty and copied it to the clipboard.
Now I'm painstakingly breaking it out into templates so that Wt can render a new file each time.
How to read/write data into excel 2007 in c++?
Excel provides COM interface which you can use from your C++ application.
I have experience with Excel 2003 only but I think for excel 2007 it will also work.
This can be done e.g. with #import or in the way described in this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216686
There is a python solution (using COM dispatch) here: http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/2036
It's not C++, but the COM interface should be the same no matter which language you use, right?
You wouldn't need to port everything. Just __init__, set_range, get_value, set_value, save (or save_as), close, and quit. You might also need to dispose of garbage (as python has automatic gc).
Or you could just port (and modify) the following code (which I haven't tested, as I don't have excel anymore - you should probably check it by downloading python and pythonwin):
from win32com.client import Dispatch
app = Dispatch("Excel.Application")
app.Visible = True # spooky - watch the app run on your desktop!
app.Workbooks.Open("C:\\book.xls")
range = app.ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(1).Range("a1")
print 'The range was:'
print range.Value
range.Value = 42
print 'The value is now 42'
app.ActiveWorkbook.Save()
app.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs("C:\\excel2.xls")
app.ActiveWorkbook.Close()
app.Quit()
# any gc to do?
Excel 2007 files are simply zip files. Try to rename .xlsx to .zip: you can extract files and folders. With a text editor you can view that they are all XML files.
So the solution:
use a common class to unzip your xlsx
use an xml parser to grab you data
if you have modified somethig, re-zip all
No COM object required.
Depending on your c++ compiler you can easyly find the required sources.
There are three main things you need to do.
1) Ensure pre-requisite files are installed and locatable.
Blindingly obvious I know, but make sure you have a suitable version of Excel installed, so that you can locate the required Microsoft libraries (and their locations).
namely MSO.DLL, VBE6EXT.OLB and EXCEL.EXE
2) Set up the Microsoft libraries.
In your C++ code, let's say you start with a simple console application, be sure to include the import libraries in any C++ application that interfaces with Excel. In my example I use:
#import "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\microsoft shared\\OFFICE11\\MSO.DLL" \
rename( "RGB", "MSORGB" )
using namespace Office;
#import "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\microsoft shared\\VBA\\VBA6\\VBE6EXT.OLB"
using namespace VBIDE;
#import "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\OFFICE11\\EXCEL.EXE" \
rename( "DialogBox", "ExcelDialogBox" ) \
rename( "RGB", "ExcelRGB" ) \
rename( "CopyFile", "ExcelCopyFile" ) \
rename( "ReplaceText", "ExcelReplaceText" ) \
exclude( "IFont", "IPicture" ) no_dual_interfaces
3) Use the Excel Object Model in your C++ code
For example, to declare an Excel Application Object pointer for reading / writing an Excel Workbook:
Excel::_ApplicationPtr pXL;
pXL->Workbooks->Open( L"C:\\dump\\book.xls" );
And to access and manipulate the Excel Worksheet and the cells within it:
Excel::_WorksheetPtr pWksheet = pXL->ActiveSheet;
Excel::RangePtr pRange = pWksheet->Cells;
double value = pRange->Item[1][1];
pRange->Item[1][1] = 5.4321;
And so on. I have a more in-depth discussion at this following blog posting.
A low tech way I have used on a couple of projects is to make a simple script/macro/whatever that runs an external program. Write that external program in C++. Get that external program to read its input from and write its output to a .csv file (simple comma separated value text file). Excel can easily read and write .csv files, so this setup gives you everything you need to craft a viable solution.
This can all be done via the IDispatch interface. It can get really bloody complicated quickly (Cheers Microsoft) but at least once you've got your head round Excel you'll find integrating with any other MS application easy too :)
Fortunately there is someone over on codeguru who has made the process nice and easy. Once I'd read through that code I started to get my head round what excel was doing and, furthermore, i found it became REALLY easy to extend it to do other things that I wanted. Just remember that you are sending commands to Excel via the IDispatch interface. This means you need to think about how YOU would do something to figure out how to do it programatically.
Edit: the code guru example is for Excel 2003 but it should be fairly easy to extend it to 2007 :)
Start here with the OpenXml Sdk. Download the SDK from here. The SDK uses .NET, so you might need to use C++.NET
It has been a very long time but I have used the Jet OLEDB to get at Excel files. You might start searching in that direction.
I have used a 3rd Party component for this in the past: OLE XlsFile from SM Software (not free, but inexpensive). The advantage of this component over the Microsoft COM components is that you can use it to write XLS files even if Excel is not installed.
It also allows you to create speadsheets or workbooks with embedded formulas and formatting, something not possible if you use CSV files as an interchange format.
If you need the best performance, writing binary Excel files is the way to go and writing them is not as difficult as reading them. The binary file format is relatively well documented by the OpenOffice.org project:
http://sc.openoffice.org/excelfileformat.pdf
and Microsoft has also released the documentation:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/E/0BE8BDD7-E5E8-422A-ABFD-4342ED7AD886/Excel97-2007BinaryFileFormat(xls)Specification.xps
This solution will work best if you have to write many Excel files, mostly with data and little formatting, and if you don't want to open the files at the same time. If you write a single Excel file to open it afterwards, you can probably use the propsed C++ COM Interface as the other posters have explained.
Using the COM interface will necessitate expensive out-of-process calls unless you write an Excel COM Addin. If you write an Addin that imports your data into the current Excel sheet, filling the sheet will still be much slower than dumping a file, but for a single file at a time this can be acceptable depending on your user scenario. If you do decide to use the COM interface, minimize the number of calls to Excel. Use the methods that allow to insert an array of values if they exist, set style properties by row and column is possible and not per cell.
You can use ODBC to read and write data from an excel file easily without Excel. The link:Here
The link for how to write data using odbc: Here
I've used a set of C++ classes that is available from CodeProject before to write to XLS files.
It's really easy to use, and free! You can find it here.
Took me no time to set up.