Question posted 2009 · +8 upvotes
I’m writing an app where I need to retrieve some rows from a DB and dump them into an Excel spreadsheet. I’m using Linq to retrieve these rows.
Is it possible to dump these rows directly into their counterparts in the Excel sheet (where one cell in Excel corresponds to one cell from the DB)?
Accepted answer +16 upvotes
I am personally not a big fan of using libraries to such things as I always find it limiting at some point later…
I used reflection in order to generate the column headers and get the cell values of each row. And if you are using .NET framework 3.5 your can take advantage of extensions methods so that you can export any IEnumerable<object> to an excel XDocument file.
Here is how I did it:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;
namespace YourNameSpace
{
public static class ExcelExportExtensions
{
public static XDocument ToExcelXml(this IEnumerable<object> rows)
{
return rows.ToExcelXml("Sheet1");
}
public static XDocument ToExcelXml(this IEnumerable<object> rows, string sheetName)
{
sheetName = sheetName.Replace("/", "-");
sheetName = sheetName.Replace("\", "-");
XNamespace mainNamespace = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet";
XNamespace o = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office";
XNamespace x = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel";
XNamespace ss = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet";
XNamespace html = "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40";
XDocument xdoc = new XDocument(new XDeclaration("1.0", "utf-8", "yes"));
var headerRow = from p in rows.First().GetType().GetProperties()
select new XElement(mainNamespace + "Cell",
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Data",
new XAttribute(ss + "Type", "String"), p.Name)); //Generate header using reflection
XElement workbook = new XElement(mainNamespace + "Workbook",
new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "html", html),
new XAttribute(XName.Get("ss", "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"), ss),
new XAttribute(XName.Get("o", "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"), o),
new XAttribute(XName.Get("x", "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/"), x),
new XAttribute(XName.Get("xmlns", ""), mainNamespace),
new XElement(o + "DocumentProperties",
new XAttribute(XName.Get("xmlns", ""), o),
new XElement(o + "Author", "Smartdesk Systems Ltd"),
new XElement(o + "LastAuthor", "Smartdesk Systems Ltd"),
new XElement(o + "Created", DateTime.Now.ToString())
), //end document properties
new XElement(x + "ExcelWorkbook",
new XAttribute(XName.Get("xmlns", ""), x),
new XElement(x + "WindowHeight", 12750),
new XElement(x + "WindowWidth", 24855),
new XElement(x + "WindowTopX", 240),
new XElement(x + "WindowTopY", 75),
new XElement(x + "ProtectStructure", "False"),
new XElement(x + "ProtectWindows", "False")
), //end ExcelWorkbook
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Styles",
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Style",
new XAttribute(ss + "ID", "Default"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Name", "Normal"),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Alignment",
new XAttribute(ss + "Vertical", "Bottom")
),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Borders"),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Font",
new XAttribute(ss + "FontName", "Calibri"),
new XAttribute(x + "Family", "Swiss"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Size", "11"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Color", "#000000")
),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Interior"),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "NumberFormat"),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Protection")
),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Style",
new XAttribute(ss + "ID", "Header"),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Font",
new XAttribute(ss + "FontName", "Calibri"),
new XAttribute(x + "Family", "Swiss"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Size", "11"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Color", "#000000"),
new XAttribute(ss + "Bold", "1")
)
)
), // close styles
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Worksheet",
new XAttribute(ss + "Name", sheetName /* Sheet name */),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Table",
new XAttribute(ss + "ExpandedColumnCount", headerRow.Count()),
new XAttribute(ss + "ExpandedRowCount", rows.Count() + 1),
new XAttribute(x + "FullColumns", 1),
new XAttribute(x + "FullRows", 1),
new XAttribute(ss + "DefaultRowHeight", 15),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Column",
new XAttribute(ss + "Width", 81)
),
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Row", new XAttribute(ss + "StyleID", "Header"), headerRow),
from contentRow in rows
select new XElement(mainNamespace + "Row",
new XAttribute(ss + "StyleID", "Default"),
from p in contentRow.GetType().GetProperties()
select new XElement(mainNamespace + "Cell",
new XElement(mainNamespace + "Data", new XAttribute(ss + "Type", "String"), p.GetValue(contentRow, null))) /* Build cells using reflection */ )
), //close table
new XElement(x + "WorksheetOptions",
new XAttribute(XName.Get("xmlns", ""), x),
new XElement(x + "PageSetup",
new XElement(x + "Header",
new XAttribute(x + "Margin", "0.3")
),
new XElement(x + "Footer",
new XAttribute(x + "Margin", "0.3")
),
new XElement(x + "PageMargins",
new XAttribute(x + "Bottom", "0.75"),
new XAttribute(x + "Left", "0.7"),
new XAttribute(x + "Right", "0.7"),
new XAttribute(x + "Top", "0.75")
)
),
new XElement(x + "Print",
new XElement(x + "ValidPrinterInfo"),
new XElement(x + "HorizontalResolution", 600),
new XElement(x + "VerticalResolution", 600)
),
new XElement(x + "Selected"),
new XElement(x + "Panes",
new XElement(x + "Pane",
new XElement(x + "Number", 3),
new XElement(x + "ActiveRow", 1),
new XElement(x + "ActiveCol", 0)
)
),
new XElement(x + "ProtectObjects", "False"),
new XElement(x + "ProtectScenarios", "False")
) // close worksheet options
) // close Worksheet
);
xdoc.Add(workbook);
return xdoc;
}
}
}
I have also created another extention method to ease return the XDocument in web scenarios:
public static DownloadableFile ToDownloadableXmlFileForExcel2003(this System.Xml.Linq.XDocument file, string fileName)
{
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
XmlWriterSettings xmlWriterSettings = new XmlWriterSettings() { Encoding = Encoding.UTF8 };
XmlWriter xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(ms, xmlWriterSettings);
file.Save(xmlWriter); //.Save() adds the <xml /> header tag!
xmlWriter.Close(); //Must close the writer to dump it's content its output (the memory stream)
DownloadableFile dbf =
new DownloadableFile
{
FileName = String.Format("{0}.xls", fileName.Replace(" ", "")),
Content = ms.ToArray(),
MimeType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"
};
ms.Close();
ms.Dispose();
return dbf;
}
Hope this helps!
2 code variants in this answer
- Variant 1 — 142 lines, starts with
using System; - Variant 2 — 23 lines, starts with
public static DownloadableFile ToDownloadableXmlFileForExce…
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