Re: Struggling with an excel file

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been hunting around the Net for a solution and I have wondered if 
translation was an issue.  I don't specifically translate anything I 
know of.  Once the spreadsheet is created the getSpreadSheet method does 
the following:

   public byte[] getSpreadSheet(String sheetname, UserContainer 
userContainer) throws IOException{
      
      
       String userId = userContainer.getDaoContainer().getUserId();
      
       String filePath = _spreadsheetPath + userId.trim();
      
       byte[] outFile = null;
       // We'll need some logic to use either the AS400 routines or the
       // regular file utility
       if(_i5os) // properties value
           outFile = 
AS400FileUtility.downloadFile(userContainer.getDaoContainer(), filePath, 
sheetname);
       else
           outFile = FileUtility.downloadFile(filePath, sheetname);

       return ourFile;
   }

I originally thought the issue was here because the downloadFile method 
would use the AS400FileUtility class and it could account for the 
difference I was seeing when things ran on the System i vs on my 
notebook, but after the new war deployed to Tomcat (5.0.28) , both the 
System i and my local notebook produce a bad excel file.

FWIW  the downloadFile method is:

   public static byte[] downloadFile(String filepath, String 
filename)    throws IOException {
       FileInputStream source = null;
       try {
           String sourceName = filepath + File.separator + filename;
           // Path and file should have been created by spreadsheet 
builder
           // which puts the file into the folder.  We are just 
retrieving it here

           source = new FileInputStream(sourceName);
           int available = source.available();          

           System.out.println("Source file successfully opened");

           byte[] buffer = new byte[available];

           //int bytesread = source.read(buffer);
           //System.out.println("Bytes read:" + bytesread);

           return buffer;

       } catch (IOException e) {
           e.printStackTrace();
           return null;
       } finally {
           if (source != null)
               source.close();

       }
   }

Not being a "raw" file reader, how would I go about "comparing the hex 
values"?

Thanks

Pete



Scott Klement wrote:
> Hi Pete,
>
> Excel files are binary documents -- they contain lots of non-text data. 
>   With that in mind, is it possible that somewhere along the line the 
> system is trying to translate your Excel document from one CCSID to another?
>
> We commonly expect this behavior with i5/OS applications, because we 
> work so much in EBCDIC text, and the PC wants ASCII text, so we want the 
> operating system to "automatically" translate the document.  But in the 
> case of an Excel spreadsheet, it's very important that no translation 
> takes place.
>
> Does the getSpreadSheet() method do any translation?  (Any at all... 
> doesn't have to be ASCII to EBCDIC...  translating ASCII to Unicode 
> would corrupt the file as well).
>
> Does the BufferedOutputStream do any translation?
>
> Does the HTTP server (I assume you're using Tomcat or WebSphere) do any 
> translation?
>
> Obviously, you want to make sure that nothing gets translated.
>
> If all else fails, maybe you could compare the hex values of the data 
> that the browser receives with the hex values of the data of the file in 
> the folder.  If one works and the other fails, then they must be 
> different.  If so, what's the difference?  That would give you a good 
> idea of where to look for the problem.
>
>
>