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How can I connect to an Excel spreadsheet file using jdbc?

JDBC Interview Questions and Answers

(Continued from previous question...)

How can I connect to an Excel spreadsheet file using jdbc?

Let's say you have created the following Excel spreadsheet in a worksheet called Sheet1 (the default sheet name). And you've saved the file in c:\users.xls.

USERID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
pkua Peter Kua
jlsmith John Smith
gh2312 Everett Johnson
chimera Faiz Abdullah
roy6943 Roy Sudirman

Since Excel comes with an ODBC driver, we'll use the JDBC-ODBC bridge driver that comes packaged with Sun's JDK to connect to our spreadsheet.
In Excel, the name of the worksheet is the equivalent of the database table name, while the header names found on the first row of the worksheet is the equivalent of the table field names. Therefore, when accessing Excel via jdbc, it is very important to place your data with the headers starting at row 1.
1. Create a new ODBC Data Source using the Microsoft Excel Driver. Name the DSN "excel", and have it point to c:\users.xls.
2. Type in the following code:

package classes;
import java.sql.*;

public class TestServer
{
static
{
try {
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
}
catch (Exception e) {
System.err.println(e);
}
}

public static void main(String args[]) {
Connection conn=null;
Statement stmt=null;
String sql="";
ResultSet rs=null;

try {
conn=DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:excel","","");
stmt=conn.createStatement();
sql="select * from [Sheet1$]";
rs=stmt.executeQuery(sql);

while(rs.next()){
System.out.println(rs.getString("USERID")+
" "+ rs.getString("FIRST_NAME")+" "+
rs.getString("LAST_NAME"));
}
}
catch (Exception e){
System.err.println(e);
}
finally {
try{
rs.close();
stmt.close();
conn.close();
rs=null;
stmt=null;
conn=null;
}
catch(Exception e){}
}
}
}

Notice that we have connected to the Excel ODBC Data Source the same way we would connect to any normal database server.
The only significant difference is in the SELECT statement. Although your data is residing in the worksheet called "Sheet1", you'll have to refer to the sheet as Sheet1$ in your SQL statements. And because the dollar sign symbol is a reserved character in SQL, you'll have to encapsulate the word Sheet1$ in brackets, as shown in the code.

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