Trouble rendering Excel file, render succeeds, but no file

[grundor]

In my application I am already able to successfully render Excel files from rich:dataTable's using excelExporter.export.

I am now trying to create and render an Excel document using the Seam excel tags, but although the render call comes back without error, no document appears to be generated.

Here is the document I am trying to render:

<e:workbook xmlns:e="http://jboss.com/products/seam/excel">
     <e:worksheet name="Developers">
          <e:cell column="0" row="0" value="Daniel Roth"/>
          <e:cell column="0" row="1" value="Nicklas Karlsson"/>
     </e:worksheet>
</e:workbook>

My code that does the render:

    public boolean export() {
          try {
               Renderer.instance().render("/admin/regprogram/signups_export.xhtml");
               facesMessages.add("Excel export successful"); 
          } catch (Exception e) {
              facesMessages.add("Excel export failed: " + e.getMessage());
              return false;
          }
          return true;
    }

I have added the following to my components.xml:

   <document:document-store use-extensions="true"/>

And my web.xml contains:

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>Document Store Servlet</servlet-name> 
    <servlet-class>org.jboss.seam.document.DocumentStoreServlet</servlet-class> 
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Document Store Servlet</servlet-name> 
    <url-pattern>*.csv</url-pattern> 
  </servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Document Store Servlet</servlet-name> 
    <url-pattern>*.xls</url-pattern> 
  </servlet-mapping>

What could I be missing?  Must be a problem with my configuration that does not affect the ability to export from rich:dataTable...

Much appreciate if anyone has any suggestions.

-Mark

[nickarls]

exportKey

[grundor]

Thanks Niklas,

I see the use of exportKey in the sample, but I thought that was only needed if I wanted to access the workbook programmatically after it was rendered.

So I am assuming now that the render() call renders the file but does not feed it to the browser.  I need to access the file like in the sample using exportKey and send to the browser myself.

-Mark

[nickarls]

For normal use, no exportKey, just redirect to the view

[grundor]

Got it - thank you.

I feel silly - I assumed that the excel export required the use of Renderer.render() the way that email does.  I was making it too hard!

Great feature!