I just had this problem. In the end I went for the Office Open XML format which is supported  in office 2007, and older version with a conversion package. The format is basically a zip file (use the zip processor) with xml files.

Was a bit of work to find documentation on the format. Here's a starting point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

(And I didn't manage to get colors in my spreadsheet)

From: Leavy, Alan <[hidden email]>
Subject: [ops-users] Exporting data from an Orbeon Form to an Excel spreadsheet
To: [hidden email]
Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 3:33 PM

Hi,

 

I’m new to this mailing list and I already have a question J

 

I have a form which pulls annual expense records from a database. The populated model instance looks like this:

 

<expenses ex="565.00" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:p="http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/pipeline" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" xmlns:oxf="http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/processors" xmlns:sql="http://orbeon.org/oxf/xml/sql">

  <year>2009</year>

  <wm_id>RWWM00011</wm_id>

  <wm_name>cafekiwm_name>

  <fb_id>RWFB00011fb_id>

  <local_currency>RWF</local_currency>

    <section name="CapEx Loan Expenses" currency="usd">

      <item name="Interest" id="C9224C6A-50E1-4081-BCAA-EF80D0604960" advance="0">100.00

      </item>

      <item name="Principal" id="BEA45230-13CE-49A8-B25F-FD5FFF02329F" advance="0">100.00

      </item>

    </section>

    <section name="Marketing / Credit Expenses" currency="usd">

      <item name="Service" id="B915A8A0-651C-4008-9701-9230F8D6B9D9" advance="0">2000.00

      </item>

      <item name="Working Capital Fee Cost" id="B18A7788-10C6-4864-B462-792D988EF12F" advance="0">2000.00

      </item>

      <item name="Working Capital Interest Cost" id="39A5BE43-4E92-4ED8-AFA6-1DB6122FAC10" advance="0">2000.00

      </item>

    </section>

    <section name="Wetmill Expenses" currency="rwf">

         <!--AND SO ON -->

      </section>

    </section>

</expenses>

 

I’d like to the form user to be able to export this to an Excel spreadsheet, with totals for each section.

 

What’s the best way to do this sort of thing in Orbeon forms?

 I’ve seen in the Orbeon documentation that there was an Excel processor (POI library) but that this has been deprecated. There’s a reference to other internal documentation on Converters [http://www.orbeon.com/orbeon/doc/processors-converters#xls-converters] but Excel is not specifically mentioned.

 

I’m guessing that the answer might be to use an XLST pipeline to convert the model instance into something compatible with the Microsoft XML Spreadsheet schema.

If this is the case, can anyone suggest any resources / examples to help me on my way?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Regards,

    Alan.

 

 

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