Re: Webactions: generating excel-compatible CLP page

Edi Weitz <[email protected]> Mon, 29 Mar 2004 09:47:23 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.lisp.open-source.franz
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 21:43:28 -0800, Andrew Philpot <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'd like to dynamically generate a CLP page which "lies" about its
> content type (is syntactically HTML but says it's (:CONTENT-TYPE
> "application/vnd.ms-excel")) so that MSIE will use its built-in
> Excel viewer to display it.
>
> I thought that something like
>
> (webaction-project "myproject"
>    :map
>    '(("excelpage" "excelpage.clp"
>        (:content-type "application/vnd.ms-excel"))))
>
> where the content of the excelpage.clp is
>
>   <HTML>
>   <HEAD>
>   <META http-equiv="content-type" content="application/vnd.ms-excel">
>   </HEAD>
>   <BODY>
>   <TABLE>
>   <TR><TD>Raphael</TD><TD>Sally</TD></TR>
>   <TR><TD>Winfrey</TD><TD>Oprah</TD></TR>
>   <TR><TD>Lake</TD><TD>Ricki</TD></TR>
>   </TABLE>
>   </BODY>
>   </HTML>
>
> should work.  If you drop this file onto Excel, it just "does the
> right thing."  Of course in the real application, this would be
> dynamically generated rather than static.  Also, I'm persuaded that
> the embedded content-type declaration is probably ignored in this
> case.
>
> It doesn't do what I would like, however.  It just displays the
> table normally, not as a spreadsheet.

I don't know if that's your problem but IE has the annoying habit of
sometimes ignoring the content-type header and trying to "do the right
thing" (which usually isn't the right thing). It /might/ help to name
the file "excelpage.xls" instead of "excelpage.clp".

In any case you're lying, of course. The content type really is
text/html, not application/vnd.ms-excel, and the browser is supposed
to open this page with the application that's registered for this type
- which happens to be the browser itself.

Using CSV files with a correct content-type is probably the right way.

Cheers,
Edi.