Grails: How do I make my list a MS Excel file?

Question

gsp is divided into two, the top part is like a search filter, and the bottom part is the regular list that is provided by Grails

I have a template _list.gsp in my list.gsp. And I wanna create a button to make that _list.gsp template a MS Excel file.

But I want only the template to be on the Excel file. Not the rest of the page

How can I do this in the simplest and direct way possible?? Thank you!

Answer 1

Try this quite dirty trick in your index method:

response.setHeader( 'Content-Disposition', 'attachment;filename=list.xls' )

Explanation: the trick is that an HTML page renamed as *.xls can be read by office software suites. What you're doing is telling the browser to download a file with that name, instead of navigating to a regular HTML file. If you want to use this in a button, you should proceed as with any HTML generating page, and then add this header to the response. response is global to actions in Grails controllers.

Answer 2

you can also take a look at the export plugin if you want to export the list to excel format

http://www.grails.org/plugin/export

Answer 3

All you need is to send search data to your controller, in the controller you can send content as explained by mschonaker, this is an example of what I did

def report = {

           def reportType = params.report
            ....
            .....
            //Service  class that collects data based on search data passed in params
            def data = reportservice.execute(param)
            //called export plugin to generate xls file
            response.contentType =      ConfigurationHolder.config.grails.mime.types[params.format] 
    response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=${fileName}")
            exportService.export(...)
}

Answer 4

Take a look at the Excel-export plugin. This has support for downloading only in .xlsx format. Exports an excel with the simplest coding. I switched to this plugin from export plugin since had a clash with rendering plugin. https://grails.org/plugin/excel-export

response.contentType = 'application/vnd.ms-excel'
response.setHeader("Content-disposition", "attachment; filename=OrderList.xlsx")

new WebXlsxExporter().with { //pass the contructor with "templateFileNameWithPath"
      setResponseHeaders(response,new Date().format('dd-MM-yyyy_hh-mm')+"OrderList.xlsx")
      fillHeader(labels)
      add(data, fields)
      save(response.outputStream)
}

response.outputStream.flush()
response.outputStream.close()}