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This is a sample Android application to show how Apache POI can be used on Android.

It consists of two projects:

  • poishadow: A small helper project to produce a shaded jar-file for Apache POI which includes all necessary dependencies and fixes a few things that usually hinder you deploying Apache POI on Android
  • poitest: A very small sample Android application which performs some actions on XLSX-, PPTX and DOCX-files using Apache POI. See MainActivity for the actual code

Getting started

Necessary System-Properties

In order to work around problems with finding a suitable XML Parser, currently the following system properties need to be set manually during startup of your application (let me know if you know of a better way to do this, see issue #10)

System.setProperty("org.apache.poi.javax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory", "com.fasterxml.aalto.stax.InputFactoryImpl");
System.setProperty("org.apache.poi.javax.xml.stream.XMLOutputFactory", "com.fasterxml.aalto.stax.OutputFactoryImpl");
System.setProperty("org.apache.poi.javax.xml.stream.XMLEventFactory", "com.fasterxml.aalto.stax.EventFactoryImpl");
Supported Android versions

The sample project uses minimum SDK version 26, which maps to Android 8.0. Higher versions should work as well, older ones are likely not supported any more.

Dependencies

Note: Some dependencies of Apache POI are not included in the shading to keep it's size at bay. If you use code areas which require curvesapi, commons-codec or any of the other dependencies, you may need to add them in your Android application in addition to the poishadow-all.jar file dependency.

Missing java.awt classes

Unfortunately Android does not provide any of the classes in package java.awt and thus any code which uses code from there will not work. This affects various places in Apache POI, e.g. when handling column-width, images or other graphical operations.

A few classes have been re-implemented in the src-folder in project poishadow. If you are missing some you might be able to add re-implementations for more there.

We do not plan to fix all of these in this sample application, if you need more, feel free to add it and send PRs if you think it is generally useful.

Use a pre-built jar

If you want to get started quickly, there is a ready-made jar-file available in the release section, however this is not updated frequently, so it may be somewhat outdated at times.

You should be able to simply add this to your Android project and use the Apache POI classes from it.

Build the jar yourself

If you would like to get the most recent jar or if you would like to change how the jar-file is built, e.g. if you need classes that are excluded, use a different version of POI or would like to adjust the build in some other way, you can build the shaded jar with the following steps:

Preparation:

You will need the following pieces in order to get started

Get the code:

git clone https://github.com/centic9/poi-on-android.git
cd poi-on-android

Configure where your Android SDK resides:

echo "sdk.dir=/opt/android-sdk-linux" > local.properties

Configure the version of the Android Build Tools that you have installed.

vi poitest/build.gradle

Then build the shadow-jar (for some reason this works better if executed separately):

./gradlew shadowJar

Finally run the build and some testing. Make sure you have a device connected, e.g. the Android emulator.

./gradlew build connectedCheck

For only the jar-files just run build

Support this project

If you find this tool useful and would like to support it, you can Sponsor the author

Run the Android emulator

List available emulators

<android-sdk>/tools/emulator -list-avds

Start an Android emulator

<android-sdk>/tools/emulator -avd <name>

Install the apk

<android-sdk>/platform-tools/adb install ./poitest/build/outputs/apk/poitest-debug.apk

Notes

  • You can use the resulting jar-file poishadow/build/libs/poishadow-all.jar in your own project, the code in directory poitest is just a small sample Android application to show that it works.
  • This was only tested in Android Studio with the Android emulator until now, should work on real Android as well, though!
  • Tested with targetSdkVersion 26 and minSdkVersion 26

Todo

  • Add more actual functionality to the sample application, currently it just performs some basic functionality on documents.
  • Some parts of the JDK are missing on Android, e.g. AWT-related classes. Some of these are missing when some functionality of Apache POI is used and thus currently crash the sample project. There are some libraries which provide these classes, but none was in a state that allowed it to easily integrate it here.

PR which improve on these items are welcome.

Links

Licensing

Copyright 2015-2024 Dominik Stadler

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.