Read Excel File using Apache POI

Overview

In this post, we will write a simple Java program to read an excel file using Apache POI.

First of all, let us create a simple excel file with data to read. Let’s use a sample Excel sheet with movie names with 2 columns. We will read the data from the Excel file in this tutorial. The filename of the Excel file is TDocs.xlsx.

ApachePoi_ReadExcelRow

Program to Read an Excel Row

The simple method to get one single row is shown below:

public ArrayList<String> getMyRow(int rowIndex, int endColIndex,int sheetIndex) throws IOException{
        ArrayList<String> rsData = new ArrayList<String>();
        try {
            file = new File("TDocs.xlsx");
            fis = new FileInputStream(file);
            workbook = new XSSFWorkbook(fis);
            sheet = workbook.getSheetAt(sheetIndex);
            for(int colStartPosition=0; colStartPosition<=endColIndex; colStartPosition++){
                Cell cell = sheet.getRow(rowIndex).getCell(colStartPosition);

            switch(cell.getCellType()) {
            case Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING: 
            rsData.add(cell.getStringCellValue());
            break;
            }
            }
       
        }catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        finally{
            fis.close();
            }
        return rsData;
    }

Now, consume this method to read the data by passing the row index, columns in the main method.

public static void main(String... args) throws IOException
    {
        ArrayList<String> consume = new ArrayList<String>();
        ReadXL readexcel = new ReadXL();
        consume = readexcel.getMyRow(1, 1, 0);
        System.out.println("**********OutPut************");
        for(String s : consume)
        {
            System.out.print(s);
        }
        
    }

Run output of the program is displayed below :

**********OutPut************
TheIntern

Read Excel File

That’s it. We have successfully read data from an existing Excel file. This is useful in Selenium Automation for reading test data from an excel file.

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