Have a report generated from the DB, want to add an export button so they can get the same report in a excel readable sheet of some type. The key here is ease of implementation so a CSV is fine over XLS if it's easier.
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2 Answers
Excel is actually somewhat good at reading HTML. Espcially if your HTML contains just a single table. If you want to tell the browser to open the file up in excel, you can use
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"
This tells the browser to open the document in Excel, instead of just rendering it by itself. There are a few problems though. I don't think it will work if somebody wants to open it with OO.org calc instead. Also, when trying to save it, it will never convert the file to a real excel file, unless the user explicity changes the file type. If it's just an intranet app for your organization, this may not be a problem. The plus side is, is that you can use colours, borders, and even formulas, which can't be done when using straight CSV.
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MattGWagner
I've done this in a very simple application, and it worked real well. Rather than messing with any sort of exporting or the such, it handled it all with one line of code.
You can use HtmlTextWriter:
System.IO.StringWriter stringWriter = new System.IO.StringWriter();
System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(stringWriter);
grid.RenderControl(htmlWriter);
where grid is a DataGrid object. You can use other types of controls as well.
answered Apr 24, 2009 at 19:10
Fabio Vinicius Binder
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