Simple Excel exports

January 26, 2006 on 11:42 pm | In Coding | No Comments

Got some data that you need to transfer into Excel, but ODBC doesn’t fit the bill? Then why don’t you try the new and improved Excel XML format. As far as I am aware, it’s good for Excel 2000 and above:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ss:Workbook xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
  <ss:Worksheet ss:Name="First Sheet">
    <ss:Table>
      <ss:Column ss:Width="100"/>
      <ss:Column ss:Width="200"/>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Field 1</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Field 2</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">First row</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="Number">1</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Second Row</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="Number">2</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
    </ss:Table>
  </ss:Worksheet>
</ss:Workbook>

It’s fast, it’s simple, it works with anything that can spit out XML (so just about anything then) and the result looks like more work than just a few lines of XML, but with 99% less code than writing to the binary XLS format, it’s a sure winner.