How to process Excel attachment contents?

Question

I'm looking to read excel attachments to an instance and use attachment contents in the process. Any help will be highly appreciated.
Thnx,
MK
Edited by goelmk at 11/19/2007 10:19 AM

Answer 1

I can think of two alternatives:
1- Use COM (introspect Excel, and use it to open the files)
2- Use a Java library that can read Excel (for example:
http://poi.apache.org/ )
You must first download the attachment to a temporary folder. The filename
should be unique (i.e.: you can use the instance number as part of the
name 'this.id.number')
The following code should download all attachments:
bytesWritten as Int
fileName as String
files as String[]
//Download all attachments
for each attachment in attachments
do
     fileName = attachment.fileName + "_" + this.id.number
     writeFromBinaryTo BinaryFile
          using data = attachment.contents,
               name = fileName,
               append = false
          returning bytesWritten
     if bytesWritten != attachment.contentSize then
          //Something is wrong, handle de error...
     else
          files[] = fileName
     end
end
for each file in files
do
     //Use the desired API to process each of the files
end
Which choice of API you use, depends on the environment, performance
constraints, etc. If you choose COM, you must make sure that the
downloaded files are available on the machine where the COMBridge is
running (for example by using a network share), and that you're not
overloading Excel (i.e. not too many concurrent instances, Excel is not
intended for heavy concurrent use).
POI should be easier to work with, but your mileage may vary depending on
how 'standard' the Excel files are (macros that run on load, probably
won't work).
Hope this helps,
Juan
On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:19:36 -0300, Manoj Goel wrote:
I'm looking to read excel attachments to an instance and use attachment
contents in the process. Any help will be highly appreciated.
Thnx,
MK
Edited by goelmk at 11/19/2007 10:19 AM--
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