Parsing an Excel File into JavaBeans using jXLS

Fahd ShariffJuly 1st, 2014Last Updated: July 1st, 2014

1 340 1 minute read

This post shows how you can use jXLS to parse an Excel file into a list of JavaBeans.

Here is a generic utility method I wrote to do that:

/**
* Parses an excel file into a list of beans.
*
* @param <T> the type of the bean
* @param xlsFile the excel data file to parse
* @param jxlsConfigFile the jxls config file describing how to map rows to beans
* @return the list of beans or an empty list there are none
* @throws Exception if there is a problem parsing the file
*/
public static <T> List<T> parseExcelFileToBeans(final File xlsFile,
                                                final File jxlsConfigFile)
                                                throws Exception {
  final XLSReader xlsReader = ReaderBuilder.buildFromXML(jxlsConfigFile);
  final List<T> result = new ArrayList<>();
  final Map<String, Object> beans = new HashMap<>();
  beans.put("result", result);
  try (InputStream inputStream = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(xlsFile))) {
    xlsReader.read(inputStream, beans);
  }
  return result;
}

Example:

Consider the following Excel file containing person information:

FirstName	LastName	Age
Joe	Bloggs	25
John	Doe	30

Create the following Person bean to bind each Excel row to:

package model;
 
public class Person {
 
  private String firstName;
  private String lastName;
  private int age;
 
  public Person() {
  }
  public String getFirstName() {
    return firstName;
  }
  public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
    this.firstName = firstName;
  }
  public String getLastName() {
    return lastName;
  }
  public void setLastName(String lastName) {
    this.lastName = lastName;
  }
  public int getAge() {
    return age;
  }
  public void setAge(int age) {
    this.age = age;
  }
}

Create a jXLS configuration file which tells jXLS how to process your Excel file and map rows to Person objects:

<workbook>
  <worksheet name="Sheet1">
    <section startRow="0" endRow="0" />
    <loop startRow="1" endRow="1" items="result" var="person" varType="model.Person">
      <section startRow="1" endRow="1">
        <mapping row="1" col="0">person.firstName</mapping>
        <mapping row="1" col="1">person.lastName</mapping>
        <mapping row="1" col="2">person.age</mapping>
      </section>
      <loopbreakcondition>
        <rowcheck offset="0">
          <cellcheck offset="0" />
        </rowcheck>
      </loopbreakcondition>
    </loop>
  </worksheet>
</workbook>

Now you can parse the Excel file into a list of Person objects with this one-liner:

List<Person> persons = Utils.parseExcelFileToBeans(new File("/path/to/personData.xls"),
                                                   new File("/path/to/personConfig.xml"));