How to set Column Type when using EPPlus

Question

I\'m using EPPlus to generate Excel files, in DAL I\'m populating DataTable, filling data into table, and passing table to Presentation La

Answer 1

If your columns are likely to move around (as we know end-users tend to be fickle) or you just have many date columns scattered across your spreadsheet, it would be helpful to write something a little more generic. Here is what I just wrote. It finds the position of all DateTime types in my POCO and creates a list that it then uses to set the column formatting. Remember data tables are zero based and Excel is not.

        ws.Cells.LoadFromDataTable(tbl, true);
        var dPos = new List();
        for (var i = 0; i < tbl.Columns.Count; i++)
            if (tbl.Columns[i].DataType.Name.Equals("DateTime"))
                dPos.Add(i);
        foreach (var pos in dPos)
        {
            ws.Column(pos+1).Style.Numberformat.Format = "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM";
        }

If you are doing more than one datatable, you'll probably want to refactor it off into a function.

And here is a freebie... I can't take credit for this code. It takes a POCO list and turns it into a data table. It has made my life easier on a number of occasions having it in my 'toolkit'. Enjoy.

        public DataTable ConvertToDataTable(IList data)
    {
        var properties =
           TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(T));
        var table = new DataTable();
        foreach (PropertyDescriptor prop in properties)
            table.Columns.Add(prop.Name, Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(prop.PropertyType) ?? prop.PropertyType);
        foreach (T item in data)
        {
            var row = table.NewRow();
            foreach (PropertyDescriptor prop in properties)
                row[prop.Name] = prop.GetValue(item) ?? DBNull.Value;
            table.Rows.Add(row);
        }
        return table;
    }