Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet application that allows users to create, edit, and manage data in tabular form. Java is a popular programming language with a robust ecosystem of libraries and tools. If you need to work with Excel files in a Java application, Aspose.Cells for Java is a powerful and versatile library that can help you read, manipulate, and create Excel files with ease. In this blog post, we will explore how to read Excel files in Java using Aspose.Cells for Java.
Java Library to Read Excel Files
To read data from the Excel sheets, we will use Aspose.Cells for Java. It is a spreadsheet manipulation API to create Excel files from scratch. Moreover, it allows you to read and manipulate existing Excel files quite easily. The API can be downloaded from the downloads section or installed by adding the following Maven configurations in pom.xml.
<repository>
<id>AsposeJavaAPI</id>
<name>Aspose Java API</name>
<url>https://repository.aspose.com/repo/</url>
</repository>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.aspose</groupId>
<artifactId>aspose-cells</artifactId>
<version>23.8</version>
</dependency>
Reading an Excel File in Java
In Excel files, the data is stored in cells where each cell is identified by its name (A1, B3, etc.) or the row and column index. These cells collectively form a worksheet and an Excel file is comprised of single or multiple worksheets. All the worksheets are contained in a workbook.
So this was a brief overview of the structure of an Excel file. Let’s now proceed to read data from an Excel file.
The following are the steps to read and print data in an Excel file in Java.
- Load the Excel file using Workbook class.
- Create an object of WorksheetCollection class and get reference of the worksheets using Workbook.getWorksheets() method.
- Start a loop to go through all the worksheets in the collection and in each iteration, perform the following steps:
- Get reference of the worksheet in a Worksheet object.
- Get count of data rows and columns in the worksheet.
- Start a loop for rows.
- Start a nested loop for columns.
- Read data from each cell using Worksheet.getCells().get(rowIndex, columnIndex).getValue() method.
The following code sample shows how to read an Excel file in Java.
The following is the output that we get in the console after running the code sample above.
Reading an Excel File in Java
Read Data from an Excel Sheet
You can also read only a particular sheet in an Excel file. For this, you can select the desired sheet from the workbook using index and then read its data. The following are the steps to read a specific Excel sheet in Java.
- Load the Excel file using Workbook class.
- Get reference of desired worksheet in a Worksheet object using Workbook.getWorksheets().get(index) method.
- Get count of data rows and columns in the worksheet.
- Start a loop for rows.
- Start a nested loop for columns.
- Read data from each cell using Worksheet.getCells().get(rowIndex, columnIndex).getValue() method.
The following code sample shows how to read data from a particular worksheet in Java.
Get Free Java Excel Reader
You can read data from Excel files without any evaluation limitations by getting a free temporary license.
Java API to Read Excel Files - Read More
You can explore other features of Aspose.Cells for Java using the documentation. In case you would have any queries, feel free to let us know via our forum.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Aspose.Cells for Java is a robust library for working with Excel files in Java applications. Whether you need to read, manipulate, or create Excel files, this library provides a wide range of features and capabilities to help you achieve your goals. With Aspose.Cells, you can automate Excel-related tasks and enhance the functionality of your Java applications. This article provided you with a simplified way of reading Excel files or sheets in Java. You can integrate this feature in your Java applications with ease.