Question

I’m using Struts2, Spring, and Hibernate.

I have written a simple Excel file called test.xls with POI. When I run the action, it works because test.xls appears, but in my tomcat folder.

I want that file to be downloadable on my jsp page. How do I go about getting the user to download the .xls file? Rather, how do I call that path?

Sorry if the answer is obvious, I am new to this. I know it probably has something to do with the ServletContext or HttpServletRequest?

[edit] I got it working thanks to the below answers. Here is the working code:

private InputStream excelStream;

public String export(){
//Create excelfile
    HSSFWorkbook workbook = new HSSFWorkbook();
    FileOutputStream file = null;

    try{
         file = new FileOutputStream("poi-test.xls"); 
    }
    catch(IOException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }       
//Populate workbook with all the excel stuff
    ...

//Write to file
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    try{
        workbook.write(file);
        workbook.write(baos);
        ByteArrayInputStream bis = new ByteArrayInputStream(baos.toByteArray()); 
        excelStream = bis;
    }
    catch(IOException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return "excel";
}

public InputStream getExcelStream() {
    return excelStream;
}


public void setExcelStream(InputStream excelStream) {
    this.excelStream = excelStream;
}

Over in my struts file:

        <result name="excel" type="stream">
            <param name="contentType">application/vnd.ms-excel</param>
            <param name="inputName">excelStream</param>
            <param name="contentDisposition">attachment; filename="excelExport.xls"</param>
            <param name="bufferSize">1024</param>
        </result>

Answer 1

You want to use the Struts2 Stream Result for this. Here is some information on that:

• http://struts.apache.org/2.2.1/docs/ajax.html
• how to return excel in Struts2 result?
• Using Stream Result with Struts2