Question

How to create and download excel document using asp.net ?

The purpose is to use xml, linq or whatever to send an excel document to a customer via a browser.

Edit : Use case

The customer load a gridview ( made with ajax framework ) in a browser, the gridview is directly linked to an sql database. I put a button ‘export to excel’ to let customer save this gridview data on his computer ansd i would like to launch a clean download of an excel.

The solutions proposed here are not clean, like send an html document and change the header to excel document etc, i’m searching a simple solution on codeplex right now, i will let you know.

Answer 1

Starter kit

First i have downloaded the Open XML Format SDK 2.0.

It comes with 3 useful tools in :

C:\Program Files\Open XML Format SDK\V2.0\tools

• DocumentReflector.exe wich auto generate the c# to build a spreadsheet from the code.
• OpenXmlClassesExplorer.exe display Ecma specification and the class documentation (using an MSDN style format).
• OpenXmlDiff.exe graphically compare two Open XML files and search for errors.

I suggest anyone who begin to rename .xlsx to .zip, so you can see the XML files who drive our spreadsheet ( for the example our sheets are in ‘xl\worksheets’ ).

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The code

Disclaimer : I have stolen all the code from an MSDN technical article ;D

The following code use an *.xlsx template i made manually to be able to modify it.

Namespaces references

using System.IO; using System.Xml; using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging; using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Spreadsheet; using DocumentFormat.OpenXml;   // Database object         DataClassesDataContext db = new DataClassesDataContext();          // Make a copy of the template file.         File.Copy(@'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\project.Web\Clients\Handlers\oxml-tpl\livreurs.xlsx', @'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\project.Web\Clients\Handlers\oxml-tpl\generated.xlsx', true);          // Open the copied template workbook.          using (SpreadsheetDocument myWorkbook = SpreadsheetDocument.Open(@'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\project.Web\Clients\Handlers\oxml-tpl\generated.xlsx', true))         {             // Access the main Workbook part, which contains all references.             WorkbookPart workbookPart = myWorkbook.WorkbookPart;              // Get the first worksheet.              WorksheetPart worksheetPart = workbookPart.WorksheetParts.ElementAt(2);              // The SheetData object will contain all the data.             SheetData sheetData = worksheetPart.Worksheet.GetFirstChild<SheetData>();              // Begining Row pointer                                    int index = 2;              // Database results             var query = from t in db.Clients select t;              // For each item in the database, add a Row to SheetData.             foreach (var item in query)             {                 // Cell related variable                 string Nom = item.Nom;                  // New Row                 Row row = new Row();                 row.RowIndex = (UInt32)index;                  // New Cell                 Cell cell = new Cell();                 cell.DataType = CellValues.InlineString;                 // Column A1, 2, 3 ... and so on                 cell.CellReference = 'A'+index;                  // Create Text object                 Text t = new Text();                 t.Text = Nom;                  // Append Text to InlineString object                 InlineString inlineString = new InlineString();                 inlineString.AppendChild(t);                  // Append InlineString to Cell                 cell.AppendChild(inlineString);                  // Append Cell to Row                 row.AppendChild(cell);                  // Append Row to SheetData                 sheetData.AppendChild(row);                  // increase row pointer                 index++;                              }              // save             worksheetPart.Worksheet.Save();          } 

I havent finished yet, my second job is to auto download the spreadsheet after modification.

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Finally, i redirect the user to my generated spredsheet (from my aspx)

 context.Response.Redirect('Oxml-tpl/generated.xlsx');