how to read exact cell content of excel file in apache POI

Question

when I read a content of cell for e.g. if it is in date format it casts into some another value like 12/31/2099 -> 46052 and $50.00 -> 50 and 50.00% -> 0.5.

But what

Answer 1

No need for explicit formatting, apache-poi provides for DataFormatter class as utility to leverage the format of the content as it appears on the excel. You can choose custom formats too, a simple example would be (cell is reference to your XSSFCell object):

System.out.println(new DataFormatter().formatCellValue(cell));

Excel sheet looks like:

Using DataFormatter (sop statement above) prints:

50%
$ 1,200
12/21/14

Where your normal formatting would print:

0.5
1200.0
21-Dec-2014

Answer 2

I would not try and alter the data type while I am reading.

Instead of that, I would try to

• get the cell type first of all
• then use the appropiate getter method for each data type

For example:

// Let's say you have prepared a DecimalFormat yourNumberFormatter and a
// DateFormat yourDateFormatter with the format that is appropiate to your
// presentation 
Cell cell = ...;
String value = null;
switch (cell.getCellType()) {
   case Cell.TYPE_NUMERIC:
     // Date format
     if ( DateUtil.isCellDateFormatted(cell) ) {
        value = yourDateFormatter.format(cell.getDateCellValue());
     }
     else {
        value = yourNumberFormatter.format(cell.getNumericCellValue());
     }
     break;
   case Cell.TYPE_STRING:
     value = cell.getStringCellValue();
     break;
  // Etc.
}