How to transfer data from MVC HTML view to Excel file

Question

Hi,I have to transfer data entered in HTML view in my MVC application to an excel file when I click on a submit button.I have tried something like Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=OnlineQuotes.xls"); Response.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/vnd.ms-excel"); return View(); in my Controllers action method.But it is not working.Also I have tried using a javascript,that is saving the page source code to a file.I want to append a row to the excel file which should be the data entered in my table's tds. Anybody can help??

Candy Brown · Answer

Jaganathan I'm not sure if this is a good approach, I mean you are suggesting that he should use an ASP.NET GridView control but he is has an ASP.NET MVC application. This adds an unnecessary dependency, also the only reason for this is so that you can call a RenderControl on it which will provide a HTML formatted content, but he already has that. And last it is not possible to end the response and after it send the view. SO question that Abhinav should work, but I believe the easiest way would be to just use one of the Controller.File methods which returns the FileContentResult instead of the View. But I need to point out that these solutions are not actually downloading an excel file, instead they are streaming a HTML file which has an XLS extension. This workaround is sometimes acceptable because most of the excel applications will read the content correctly. But if you need a real excel file then you should take a look at this article that demonstrates how to convert the HTML to an Excel file in C# .

Abhinav Golwalkar · Answer

Hi, This SO question may help you. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12378945/export-view-to-excel-with-razor-without-losing-the-style

Jaganathan Bantheswaran · Answer

Hi, You cant do this directly as you mentioned. On clicking submit button, you call on action something link ExportToExcel. public ActionResult ExportToExcel() { var texts= new System.Data.DataTable("teste"); texts.Columns.Add("col1", typeof(string)); texts.Columns.Add("col2", typeof(string)); texts.Rows.Add(1, "your textbox1 value"); texts.Rows.Add(2, "your textbox2 value"); var grid = new GridView(); grid.DataSource = texts; grid.DataBind(); Response.ClearContent(); Response.Buffer = true; Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=MyExcelFile.xls"); Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel"; Response.Charset = ""; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); HtmlTextWriter htw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw); // rendering grid grid.RenderControl(htw); Response.Output.Write(sw.ToString()); Response.Flush(); Response.End(); return View("YourView"); }