How to write a jXLS template and where to write it

Question

I'm trying to use jXLS to export data from a list to an Excel sheet. I need to create an Excel template using jXLS and print out a list of data using that template. I have a Bean class called Department and I need to use a forEach statement to loop through the list and write data to the Excel sheet.

Can someone please tell me how and where I can write my Excel template? I know my code inside should look something like this -

            <jx:forEach items="${departments}" var="department">
                ${department.name} | ${department.chief}
            </jx:forEach>

Solution

You need to create an Excel Template file where in you define your basic structure which you need to repeat for number of objects in the collection.

The code

<jx:forEach items="${departments}" var="department">
                ${department.name} | ${department.chief}
            </jx:forEach>

will go in that template excel.

Then you need to use JXLS API in java code to generated the excel from this template.

Map contextBeans = new HashMap();
contextBeans.put("departments", departmentList);
xlsTransformer.transformXLS(xlsTemplateFileURL.getPath(), contextBeans, reportFileURL.getPath());

This code will create the excel file out of the template file populated with the collection loaded in contextBeans Map.