Reading date values from excel cell using POI HSSF API

Question

I'm using POI HSSF API for my excel manipulations in Java. I've a date value "8/1/2009" in one of my excel cell and while I try to read this value using HSSF API, it detects the cell type as Numeric and returns the 'Double' value of my date. See the sample code below:

cell = row.getCell(); // date in the cell '8/1/2009'
switch (cell.getCellType()) {

case HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_STRING:
    cellValue = cell.getRichStringCellValue().getString();
    break;
case HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC:
    cellValue = new Double(cell.getNumericCellValue()).toString();
    break;
default:
}

Cell.getCellType() returns NUMERIC_TYPE and thus this code converts the date to double! :(

Is there any way to read the date as it is in HSSF POI !?

Answer 1

You could take a look at:

HSSFDateUtil.isCellDateFormatted()

See the POI Horrible Spreadsheet Format API for more details on HSSFDateUtil:

http://poi.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/poi/hssf/usermodel/HSSFDateUtil.html

That also provides some helper methods for returning Excel getExcelDate() and Java dates getJavaDate(). You need to be somewhat wary of different date formats though...

Answer 2

Excel treats dates and times as numbers... Jon said it better, so I won't echo him here...

However, sample code for what you've put in the question is at http://poi.apache.org/spreadsheet/quick-guide.html#CellContents

Answer 3

If you using the POI 3.5 you can use the following

cell.getDateCellValue() method. This will work for excel 2007 as well.