How to generate XML from an Excel VBA macro?

Question

So, I've got a bunch of content that was delivered to us in the form of Excel spreadsheets. I need to take that content and push it into another system. The other system takes its input from an XML file. I could do all of this by hand (and trust me, management has no problem making me do that!), but I'm hoping there's an easy way to write an Excel macro that would generate the XML I need instead. This seems like a better solution to me, as this is a job that will need to be repeated regularly (we'll be getting a LOT of content in Excel sheets) and it just makes sense to have a batch tool that does it for us.

However, I've never experimented with generating XML from Excel spreadsheets before. I have a little VBA knowledge but I'm a newbie to XML. I guess my problem in Googling this is that I don't even know what to Google for. Can anyone give me a little direction to get me started? Does my idea sound like the right way to approach this problem, or am I overlooking something obvious?

Thanks StackOverflow!

Answer 1

You might like to consider ADO - a worksheet or range can be used as a table.

Const adOpenStatic = 3
Const adLockOptimistic = 3
Const adPersistXML = 1

Set cn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Set rs = CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

''It wuld probably be better to use the proper name, but this is
''convenient for notes
strFile = Workbooks(1).FullName

''Note HDR=Yes, so you can use the names in the first row of the set
''to refer to columns, note also that you will need a different connection
''string for >=2007
strCon = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" & strFile _
        & ";Extended Properties=""Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1"";"


cn.Open strCon
rs.Open "Select * from [Sheet1$]", cn, adOpenStatic, adLockOptimistic

If Not rs.EOF Then
    rs.MoveFirst
    rs.Save "C:\Docs\Table1.xml", adPersistXML
End If

rs.Close
cn.Close

Answer 2

Credit to: curiousmind.jlion.com/exceltotextfile (Link no longer exists)

Script:

Sub MakeXML(iCaptionRow As Integer, iDataStartRow As Integer, sOutputFileName As String)
    Dim Q As String
    Q = Chr$(34)

    Dim sXML As String

    sXML = "<?xml version=" & Q & "1.0" & Q & " encoding=" & Q & "UTF-8" & Q & "?>"
    sXML = sXML & "<rows>"


    ''--determine count of columns
    Dim iColCount As Integer
    iColCount = 1
    While Trim$(Cells(iCaptionRow, iColCount)) > ""
        iColCount = iColCount + 1
    Wend

    Dim iRow As Integer
    iRow = iDataStartRow

    While Cells(iRow, 1) > ""
        sXML = sXML & "<row id=" & Q & iRow & Q & ">"

        For icol = 1 To iColCount - 1
           sXML = sXML & "<" & Trim$(Cells(iCaptionRow, icol)) & ">"
           sXML = sXML & Trim$(Cells(iRow, icol))
           sXML = sXML & "</" & Trim$(Cells(iCaptionRow, icol)) & ">"
        Next

        sXML = sXML & "</row>"
        iRow = iRow + 1
    Wend
    sXML = sXML & "</rows>"

    Dim nDestFile As Integer, sText As String

    ''Close any open text files
    Close

    ''Get the number of the next free text file
    nDestFile = FreeFile

    ''Write the entire file to sText
    Open sOutputFileName For Output As #nDestFile
    Print #nDestFile, sXML
    Close
End Sub

Sub test()
    MakeXML 1, 2, "C:\Users\jlynds\output2.xml"
End Sub