Problem in reading Xls Using POI jar...

Question

hi I wanted to get the value of a Numeric cell as a simple string.

Suppose there the type of cell is numeric with value 90%. Now I cannot use cell.getStringCellValue() as it will throw exception. I also cannot use cell.getNumericCellValue() as it will return me .9 and not 90%.

I want to store in db which is of type varchar2, so i want the value in string only. I cannot change the cell type in xls as its the end user job, i have to handle this in code itself.

Also formatter does't work well as there could be differentcell types in the xls...dd:mm,dd:mm:ss,formula etc.

All i Want is that whatever the cell type is i need to get its value as simple String.

plz Help

Thanks for ur time

Answer 1

Try

cell.getRichStringCellValue ().getString();    

Have a look at this example
Here is Doc

Answer 2

You can force the value to be returned as a String using the methods below

HSSFDataFormatter hdf = new HSSFDataFormatter();
System.out.println (hdf.formatCellValue(mycell));

will return "90%"

The API for this method is at http://poi.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/poi/ss/usermodel/DataFormatter.html#formatCellValue%28org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.Cell%29

This works directly even with an HSSFCell

it worked for me even when my Cell is an HSSFCell

i've also tried this cast - which works.

HSSFCell cell1 = (HSSFCell) row1.getCell(2);

HSSFDataFormatter hdf = new HSSFDataFormatter();
System.out.println ("formatted "+ hdf.formatCellValue(cell1));