Executing VB script from Spring Boot Application - excel

Question

I want to execute a VB script from Spring Boot application, the script is like:
' Creating a file as test acces to macro
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objFSO.CreateTextFile("C:\excel\FLAG_TEST")
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
Set objWorkbook = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\excel\excelFile.xls")
objExcel.Application.EnableEvents = False
objExcel.Application.DisplayAlerts = False
objExcel.Application.Run "excelFile.xls!executeMacroFunction"
objExcel.Application.Quit
I tried to execute the script from Spring Boot service by:
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{"C:\\Windows\\System32\\wscript.exe", "C:/vb/script.vbs"});
The above line code does not work on the application deployed on Tomcat 9 (it works fine when running as Spring Boot App on Eclipse)
Then I tried to execute the script via a batch file launched from the app
On batch file, I tried to execute the VB script by
rem First way
Set wscript = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
wscript.Run "C:/vb/script.vbs"
--------------------
rem Second way (System 64bit)
C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe C:/vb/script.vbs
--------------------
rem Third way (System 64bit)
wscript C:/vb/script.vbs
And running the batch file from Java with different ways too:
// First way
ProcessBuilder processBuilder = new ProcessBuilder("C:/batch/executor.bat");
final Process process = processBuilder.start();
// Second way
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start \"\" C:/batch/executor.bat");
// Third way
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(
"cmd /c start \"\" C:/batch/executor.bat",
null,
new File("C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64"));
All these ways do not work, the scripts have no problem since they work when I run manually the batch file (by double click)
On the execution of the macro from Spring Boot, the test file (FLAG_TEST) is created and then the execution is blocked at the line:
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
Am I missing something ?...Thanks a lot in advance !

Answer 1

Tried also with Jacob DLL to run the Macro inside the excel file, it also didn't work for me within a Tomcat server
I decided at the end to abandon any kind of external tool and do the thing within Spring Boot, parsing the Excel file via an Excel Java API and migrating the Macro program to Java: JExcel
<dependency>
<groupId>net.sourceforge.jexcelapi</groupId>
<artifactId>jxl</artifactId>
<version>2.6.12</version>
</dependency>
Unlike some other Excel parsing APIs, the Jexcel get the cell text as it is: String, Number, Boolean, Formula (its displayed result), no need to handle the different cases of content type
import jxl.Cell;
import jxl.Sheet;
import jxl.Workbook;
import jxl.read.biff.BiffException;
import jxl.WorkbookSettings;
// Set Encoding 1252 that supports many European languages (special characters included)
WorkbookSettings workbookSettings = new WorkbookSettings();
workbookSettings.setEncoding("Cp1252");
Workbook workbook = Workbook.getWorkbook(new File(EXCEL_FILE_LOCATION), workbookSettings);
Sheet sheet = workbook.getSheet(0);
Cell cellDemo = sheet.getCell(0, 0); // Or sheet.getCell("A1");
// Get the displayed cell centent as a text
String cellContent = cellDemo.getContents();
System.out.print("Cell A1 centent:" + cellContent);
The Java parsing makes the exception handling of data validation easier and more precise, no kind of abstract HMI error message (Error occurred wile processing the Excel file...)
Turns out that the Excel Java reading API implementation took less time than the several attempts of runing the Macro externally :D