Exporting data

When you set the Table Tag's export attribute to "true", a footer will appear below the table which will allow you to export the data being shown in various formats.

Displaytag includes a few ready made export views which allow you to export data in CSV, excel, and XML format. A simple PDF export view is also available. The following table lists the predefined export options included in displaytag distribution.

Configuring export and export views

The export.types parameter contains the list of registered export views. For each export type you can configure other parameters: see the export. exportname.* parameters in configuration .

You can enable/disable a specific export type using the export. exportname.enabled parameter.

If you don't want some column to show during export (or you only want them to show during export) you can use the column media attribute (see tag reference for more details).

Adding a new Export view

1. Write your own exportView class. You need to implement the org.displaytag.export.TextExportView or org.displaytag.export.BinaryExportView interface. You can look at the sample binary PDF export view or to the base text export view used by displaytag .
2. Add a displaytag.properties file in your application classpath (if you already don't have one) and add the name of your export media along with the default ones to the export type parameter:

                           
   export.types=csv excel xml [mymedia]
                           
                       

3. Always in displaytag.properties , add the following properties:

                           
   export.[mymedia]=true
                        
   export.[mymedia].class=fully.qualified.class.name
    
   export.[mymedia].label=Click here to try my export
   
   # include header parameter is forwarded to your export view
   export.[mymedia].include_header=true
                        
   # if set, file is downloaded instead of opened in the browser window
   export.[mymedia].filename=
                           
                       

4. Try it. You should see a new link with the text you added to export. mymedia .label . Clicking on it will invoke your Export view. You should see the results in your browser.

Text/Binary export views

Common displaytag export options (CSV, Xml and Excel) output a simple text-based format. Other file formats require binary content, like the sample PDF included with the distribution.

Exporting binary data from a JSP is a bit tricky, since JSPs are only designed to output characters: as a starting point keep in mind that binary export is not assured to work on every application server , at least without the help of an external filter (see export filter ).

It may work without a filter if your application server allows JSPs to call response.getOutputStream() , but this method really shouldn't be used in JSPs. Using an the export filter, especially in buffered mode, could solve the problem, since the output stream is requested by the filter outside the JSP.