Does jqgrid support exporting to excel " out of the box" or do i need to write some server side code?

Question

on this page in the release notes of jqgrid 3.7.2, i see:

Fix export url in export to excel method

but i dont see any other documention about jqgrid natively supporting export to excel.

I have an asp.net mvc site and i have always done this on the server side to generate an excel file.

Is this now possible out of the box from jqgrid. Are there any examples of how this works?

Solution

There are method excelExport in grid.import.js which do not really much. The function is not described on http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=wiki:import_methods but you can look at http://www.trirand.com/blog/?page_id=393/help/exceltrue-not-working-for-me/ to have a feeling how it work.

I also use ASP.NET MVC and WCF and make export to excel on the server side with respect of Open XML SDK 2.0 (see Creating Excel document with OpenXml sdk 2.0, how to export asp.net MVC detail view data to an excel file? or Strategy in exporting to Excel with formatting from ASP.NET?). Usage of Open XML SDK 2.0 gives you the most flexibility and you can produce a perfect Excel file which you need.

UPDATED: The answer provides demo project which shows how to implement the approach.

Comments

[leora]

i want to do this in javascript (not PHP version)

[Oleg]

therefore this feature of jqGrid is not really relevant for you and I recommended you to use Open XML SDK 2.0 or stay on other method which you currently you on the server side.

[Oleg]

Do you really want to create Excel document IN JAVASCRIPT??? It would be masochistic.

[leora]

agree with you point but i have a lot of cases where i dont care about formatting extra and want a quick way to export the data to excel and it seemed from the release notes that jqgrid supported it out of the box.

[Oleg]

For quick & dirty solution I can suggest stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2008/06/16/…. You can also create also very easy export to CSV. You can also use some commertial solutions. If you do find a way to do this with out-of-the-box features of jqGrid - OK! But I am very pessimistic.

[AabinGunz]

@Oleg: Please look at my question here

[Oleg]

@Abhishek Simon: I am now in the vocation be in a hotel and have no time. The export in excel is not the feature of jqGrid JavaScript code. You should implement it in your server code. If you can use Open XML SDK I would recommend you to use it.

[AabinGunz]

@Oleg: Thanks, i too tried to explain it to my superiors that its a server side job, but they said it will be saved in clients machine so it must be done as part of js. Thanks anyways, correct me if I am wrong. Though the .xml format opens in excel :)

[Gab]

Just as a note jqGrid PHP wrapper is commercial. A PHP Single Developer License costs from $300 to $450.