Easiest way to read Excel files in groovy?

Question

Are there any warappers/utils available to read Excel files in Groovy. I am looking for something similar to Groovy SQL\'s rows function as shown in below spock test ex

Answer 1

I could also recommend use Groovy Spreadsheet Builder. It available in maven repository (contrary to ExcelBuilder) and also have expressive Groovy-syntax:

SpreadsheetQuery query = PoiSpreadsheetCriteria.FACTORY.forFile(file)                      // <1>

Collection  cells = query.query {
    sheet {                                                                            
        row {                                                                           
            cell {
                value 'B'
            }
        }
    }
}

assert cells.size() == 1
assert cells.first().value == 'B'

Or:

Collection rows = query.query {
    sheet(name({ name.startsWith('Con') })) {
        row(1)
    }
}.rows

Documentation contains many examples. It even may write Excel files in same way!

Answer 2

POI is what your after http://poi.apache.org/ its a Java Lib so you can use it from Groovy. Not sure if there are Groovy wrappers for it anywhere

Answer 3

One of my fellow GUG members has created a tool for working with Excel using Apache POI in very much the same way you describe. It's not formalized into a library yet (AFAIK) but is available on his blog.

It allows you to write code like this:

new ExcelBuilder("customers.xls").eachLine([labels:true]) {
  new Person(name:"$firstname $lastname",
    address:address, telephone:phone).save()
}

Check it out here: http://www.technipelago.se/content/technipelago/blog/44