Object Collection Output with XML Builder

Introduction

This sample shows how to output an object collection using XML configuration file to define XLS transformation areas.

We will use a list of the following Employee objects to demonstrate how to output an object collection to Excel with JxlsPlus.

public class Employee {
    private String name;
    private int age;
    private Double payment;
    private Double bonus;
    private Date birthDate;
    private Employee superior;

    // getters/setters
    ...
}

Report template

The report template is very simple and does not include any markup to define transformation areas. It looks like this

Object collection XML builder template

XML Configuration

The XML configuration file for this example looks like this

<xls>
    <area ref="Template!A1:D4">
        <each items="employees" var="employee" ref="Template!A4:D4">
            <area ref="Template!A4:D4"/>
        </each>
    </area>
</xls>

Java code

In this example we will use jXLS POI adapter to generate the report. The Java code is listed below

    List<Employee> employees = generateSampleEmployeeData();
    try(InputStream is = ObjectCollectionXMLBuilderDemo.class.getResourceAsStream("object_collection_xmlbuilder_template.xls")) {
        try (OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("target/object_collection_xmlbuilder_output.xls")) {
            Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.createTransformer(is, os);
            try (InputStream configInputStream = ObjectCollectionXMLBuilderDemo.class.getResourceAsStream("object_collection_xmlbuilder.xml")) {
                AreaBuilder areaBuilder = new XmlAreaBuilder(configInputStream, transformer);
                List<Area> xlsAreaList = areaBuilder.build();
                Area xlsArea = xlsAreaList.get(0);
                Context context = new Context();
                context.putVar("employees", employees);
                xlsArea.applyAt(new CellRef("Result!A1"), context);
                transformer.write();
            }
        }
    }

Excel output

Final report with all the required cells highlighted is shown on the following screenshot

Object collection XML builder output