Client For Microsoft Excel in C#

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Introduction

In the following article, a brief description has been provided for a client which is used to interface with Microsoft Excel documents. Interfacing to Excel documents (reading, inserting, updating etc.) is a basic task under ADO.NET, and every developer must have a sense of interfacing to Excel documents. The MicrosoftExcelCient is a simple class any developer can use in their code to interface with Excel documents. It has been created in C# and uses OLEDB.

Inside MicrosoftExcelClient

The MicrosoftExcelClient has been created in C#, and in essence is a class which provides an easy to use simple interface to access Excel workbooks in the .NET Framework. OLEDB components are used within C# to access Excel sheets like databases.

/// <summary>
/// Connects to the source excel workbook
/// </summary>

OleDbConnection m_ConnectionToExcelBook;

/// <summary>
/// Reads the data from the document to a System.Data object
/// </summary>

OleDbDataAdapter m_AdapterForExcelBook;

Shown below are code snippets from some of the basic functions used in the MicrosoftExcelClient assembly...

Open Connection To An Excel Workbook

this.m_ConnectionToExcelBook = 
    new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet" + 
    ".OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + 
    this.m_SourceFileName + 
    ";Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;");

this.m_ConnectionToExcelBook.Open();

Read Data From An Excel Sheet

DataTable returnDataObject = new DataTable();
OleDbCommand selectCommand = 
   new OleDbCommand("select * from [" + iSheetName + "$]");

selectCommand.Connection = this.m_ConnectionToExcelBook;
this.m_AdapterForExcelBook = new OleDbDataAdapter();
this.m_AdapterForExcelBook.SelectCommand = selectCommand;
this.m_AdapterForExcelBook.Fill(returnDataObject);

Insert Or Update Format

OleDbCommand nonQueryCommand = new OleDbCommand(iQuery);
nonQueryCommand.Connection = this.m_ConnectionToExcelBook;
nonQueryCommand.CommandText = iQuery;
nonQueryCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();

How To Use The MicrosoftExcelClient

As mentioned previously, the provided client is quite simple to use for budding developers, and should be a mere cake walk for experienced pros. Shown below is a brief snippet of how simple it is to use this assembly to extract and feed data from / into an Excel sheet…

//Declare the sample object & set source data path
MicrosoftExcelClient sampleObject = 
     new MicrosoftExcelClient("SampleData.xls");

//Open connection to the excel work book
sampleObject.openConnection();

//Load the entire excel sheet into Datagrid1 
//( Sheet name is passed as a parameter )
this.dataGrid1.DataSource = sampleObject.readEntireSheet("sheet1");

//Load the result of a specific query on the excel sheet into Datagrid2 
//Query pased as a parameter

this.dataGrid2.DataSource = 
   sampleObject.readForSpecificQuery("select data1 , " + 
   "data2 ,data3 from [sheet1$]");

//******NON RESULT ORIENTED QUERIES*******
//Inserts a new record into the excel sheet
sampleObject.runNonQuery("insert into [sheet1$]" + 
         " values('1','2','3','4','5','6','7') ");

//Update the given excel sheet
sampleObject.runNonQuery("update [sheet1$] set data1 = '9'");

Conclusion

To sum it all up, the MicrosoftExcelClient is very simple to use, and is open source and not copyrighted. You may use it in parts or as a whole without any restrictions. The demo project is bug free, and any and all suggestions are welcome. You may face problems deleteing records from an Excel database when using the NonQuery function, however this is a drawback of OLEDB, and is not a mistake in the code.