export Datagrid to excel asp

Question

whats the best way to export a Datagrid to excel? I have no experience whatsoever in exporting datagrid to excel, so i want to know how you guys export datagrid to excel. i read that there are a lot of ways, but i am thinking to just make a simple export excel to datagrid function.i am using asp.net C#

cheers..

Answer 1

The simplest way is to simply write either csv, or html (in particular, a <table><tr><td>...</td></tr>...</table>) to the output, and simply pretend that it is in excel format via the content-type header. Excel will happily load either; csv is simpler...

Here's a similar example (it actually takes an IEnumerable, but it would be similar from any source (such as a DataTable, looping over the rows).

        public static void WriteCsv(string[] headers, IEnumerable<string[]> data, string filename)
        {
            if (data == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("data");
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(filename)) filename = "export.csv";

            HttpResponse resp = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response;
            resp.Clear();
            // remove this line if you don't want to prompt the user to save the file
            resp.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=" + filename);
            // if not saving, try: "application/ms-excel"
            resp.ContentType = "text/csv";
            string csv = GetCsv(headers, data);
            byte[] buffer = resp.ContentEncoding.GetBytes(csv);
            resp.AddHeader("Content-Length", buffer.Length.ToString());
            resp.BinaryWrite(buffer);
            resp.End();
        }
        static void WriteRow(string[] row, StringBuilder destination)
        {
            if (row == null) return;
            int fields = row.Length;
            for (int i = 0; i < fields; i++)
            {
                string field = row[i];
                if (i > 0)
                {
                    destination.Append(',');
                }
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(field)) continue; // empty field

                bool quote = false;
                if (field.Contains("\""))
                {
                    // if contains quotes, then needs quoting and escaping
                    quote = true;
                    field = field.Replace("\"", "\"\"");
                }
                else
                {
                    // commas, line-breaks, and leading-trailing space also require quoting
                    if (field.Contains(",") || field.Contains("\n") || field.Contains("\r")
                        || field.StartsWith(" ") || field.EndsWith(" "))
                    {
                        quote = true;
                    }
                }
                if (quote)
                {
                    destination.Append('\"');
                    destination.Append(field);
                    destination.Append('\"');
                }
                else
                {
                    destination.Append(field);
                }

            }
            destination.AppendLine();
        }
        static string GetCsv(string[] headers, IEnumerable<string[]> data)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            if (data == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("data");
            WriteRow(headers, sb);
            foreach (string[] row in data)
            {
                WriteRow(row, sb);

            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }