Apache poi Excel set readingorder right-to-left

Question

I have problems to format a cell with Apache poi 3.9 correctly. I got some english and some arabic Text in my table so I need to set the readingorder to right-to-left for some cells by using

ExtendedFormatRecord.setReadingOrder(2); doc

A HSSFCellStyle is created with

HSSFCellStyle(short index, ExtendedFormatRecord rec, HSSFWorkbook workbook) shown here

The Problem is, that the constructor is protected and the class is final. So I can't extend it. Is there a possibility to set the readingorder to right-to-left for a single cell? I don't need to set the style of the worksheet to rtl. Also this don't solve the Problem.

Does setting the read order fix it? i.e. is the problem with setting the order to 2, or with what to do instead? — Gagravarr
The problem is that I need to set the readingOrder to 2 but I think it's not possible. A workaround without changing the value would be fine. — klars
Short term, try something hacky with reflection, just to check it really solves it. If it does, we can help you find a cleaner way — Gagravarr
I can read an existing cellstyle from an excelfile which i created manually in office. This style will work fine then, because the readingorder is set to 2 (checked per debug). Thanks so far! — klars
Can you work out how to do it for .xlsx files too? The "proper" fix will mean doing something to handle both formats — Gagravarr

klars klars · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-28T07:25:53

This is how it works with reflection.

Constructor<HSSFCellStyle> con = HSSFCellStyle.class.getDeclaredConstructor(short.class,
    ExtendedFormatRecord.class, HSSFWorkbook.class);

con.setAccessible(true);

ExtendedFormatRecord eFR = new ExtendedFormatRecord();
short ro = 2;
eFR.setReadingOrder(ro);

short s = 0;
HSSFWorkbook generatedWb = new HSSFWorkbook();
HSSFCellStyle myStyle = con.newInstance(s, eFR, generatedWb);

Apache poi Excel set readingorder right-to-left

2 Answers