Creating Excel Spreadsheets In IE
In last week's tip we talked about creating an Excel spreadsheet using OLE automation inside Notes. This week we'll discuss the same topic, but using a web browser. Let's use the same example as last week. You have a view, column 1 is categorized, columns 2 and 3 are totals. In the spreadsheet, columns D and E will be computed.
To make things easy, let's do this in an agent. So the URL will be ....agentName?OpenAgent. The simplest way to create a spreadsheet is to send an HTML table directly to Excel in your agent. This is done by setting the content type in your agent. The content type will send the information directly to Excel. Here's an example:
Sub Initialize
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim excel As Variant
Dim worksheet As Variant
Dim cell As Variant
Dim view As NotesView
Dim nav As NotesViewNavigator
Dim entry As NotesViewEntry
Dim rowNum As Integer
Print {Content-Type:application/vnd.ms-excel}
Print {<HTML><HEAD>}
Print {</HEAD>}
Print {<BODY>}
Print {<TABLE>}
Print {<TR>}
Print {<TD WIDTH="55"><B>Conference</B></TD>}
Print {<TD WIDTH="60"><B>Home Wins</B></TD>}
Print {<TD WIDTH="70"><B>Home Losses</B></TD>}
Print {<TD WIDTH="60"><B>Home Win %</B></TD>}
Print {<TD WIDTH="80"><B>Cumulative Win %</B></TD>}
Print {</TR>}
The content type of application/vnd.ms-excel tells the browser to use Excel. Then we simply build a table. The first row, we set the column widths and put the headers in bold. (Last week we set the column widths and made the headers bold after everything else was done). The same variables will be needed this time.
rowNum = 2 ' Current row of data
' Get a NotesViewNavigator from our view
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set view = db.GetView("vwByConference")
Set nav = view.CreateViewNav
Set entry = nav.GetFirst
This is the same as last week - setting up the view navigator.
' Go through all the entries in the view
While Not entry Is Nothing
Print {<TR>}
Print {<TD>} & entry.ColumnValues(0) & {</TD>}
Print {<TD>} & Cstr(entry.ColumnValues(1)) & {</TD>}
Print {<TD>} & Cstr(entry.ColumnValues(2)) & {</TD>}
Print {<TD>=B} & Cstr(rowNum) & {/(B} & Cstr(rowNum) & {+C} & Cstr(rowNum) & {)</TD>}
Print {<TD>=Sum(B2..B} & Cstr(rowNum) & {)/(Sum(B2..B} & Cstr(rowNum) & {)+Sum(C2..C} _
& Cstr(rowNum) & {))</TD>}
Print {</TR>}
rowNum = rowNum + 1
Set entry = nav.GetNextCategory(entry)
Wend
This is a little different than last week. This time, we are printing out HTML that will end up being the cell values. Columns A, B, and C are straightforward. For columns D and E, we want to create a formula. That's why we start out the cell data with the equals sign. Then it's the formula, in the same way you would type it in to Excel. So, for row #4, the value in column D will be =B4/(B4+C4). Again, for the "cumulative" row, the sum is computed from row 2 through the current row.
Print "</TABLE></BODY></HTML>"
End Sub
Since all the formatting was done in the first row of the table, nothing more is needed here.
If you actually run this agent, you'll notice that the number formatting for columns D and E are "general". In the OLE automation version from last week, we formatted the data to be percentage with one decimal point. I do not belive there is any way to accomplish this same formatting using the <TABLE> technique. Next week I'll talk about using ActiveX on the browser to create a spreadsheet that you can format.