Bug in cfspreadsheet "update"?

Question

To those with experience with <cfspreadsheet>, I’d really appreciate your feedback. I’m trying to use the cfspreadsheet tag to generate a two page spreadsheet based on the output of two database queries. SheetOne uses "qryTopicList" and SheetTwo uses "qryTopicDetails".
Here's my code:
<cfscript>
// create empty spreadsheet objects
sheetOne = spreadsheetNew("topicList", "true");
sheetTwo = spreadsheetNew("topicDetails", "true");
// populate spreadsheet objects from queries
spreadsheetAddRows(sheetOne, qrytopicList);
spreadsheetAddRows(sheetTwo, qrytopicDetails);
</cfscript>
<!--- Write the two spreadsheet objects to a single file. --->
<cfspreadsheet action="write" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetOne" sheetname="Topic List" overwrite="true" />
<cfspreadsheet action="update" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetTwo" sheetname="Topic Details" />
When I run this code, I get an error:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The maximum column width for an individual cell is 255 characters.
I tracked the error down to the last line of my code which adds sheet 2. I found that the query “qrytopicDetails” has columns with more than 255 characters in them. But I know that Excel is not limited to 255 characters per cell, so I thought this might be a java/POI/ColdFusion limitation. But then I reversed the sheet order and it worked:
<cfspreadsheet action="write" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetTwo" sheetname="Topic Details" overwrite="true" />
<cfspreadsheet action="update" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetOne" sheetname="Topic List" />
So, it seems that cfspreadsheet is able to "write" a column with more than 255 characters but cannot "update" if the query contains more than 255 characters. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Yeah, it's a bug.  Well, indeed, I can see two bugs here.
Here's a more portable repro case:
<cfparam name="URL.length" type="integer">
<cfparam name="URL.xml" type="boolean">
<cfscript>
    qrytopicList = queryNew("col1");
    queryAddRow(qrytopicList);
    querySetCell(qrytopicList, "col1", "xxx");
    qrytopicDetails = queryNew("col1");
    queryAddRow(qrytopicDetails);
    querySetCell(qrytopicDetails, "col1", repeatString("x", URL.length));
    // create empty spreadsheet objects
    sheetOne = spreadsheetNew("topicList", URL.xml);
    sheetTwo = spreadsheetNew("topicDetails", URL.xml);
    // populate spreadsheet objects from queries
    spreadsheetAddRows(sheetOne, qrytopicList);
    spreadsheetAddRows(sheetTwo, qrytopicDetails);
    if (URL.xml){
        extn = "xlsx";
    }else{
        extn = "xls";
    theFile = expandPath("./test.#extn#");
</cfscript>
<!--- Write the two spreadsheet objects to a single file. --->
<cfspreadsheet action="write" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetOne" sheetname="Topic List" overwrite="true">
<cfspreadsheet action="update" filename="#theFile#" name="sheetTwo" sheetname="Topic Details">
This code breaks when one specifies "?length=267&xml=true" on the query string.  It's fine, however, with "?length=267&xml=false".
So the first bug is that it breaks at all.  The second is that it's reporting 255 as some sort of significant number whereas that's not the error boundary.  And, yes, before anyone starts, I know the significance of 255, but it's not relevant to the problem here.
As to whether it's CF or POI: dunno.
You should raise a bug though.
http://cfbugs.adobe.com/cfbugreport/flexbugui/cfbugtracker/main.html
Adam