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I am posting data to an endpoint and in getting an excel (xlsx) file back.
More details: I am required to post a JSON string to an endpoint (this is working fine).
In turn, I get back an XLXS file in the form of a byte array.
However, when looking at the body of this response I am seeing a series of ?? (Question marks) combined with random letters.
My content-type of sending and accepting is application/JSON fyi.
Any thoughts on how I can extract the info needed?
XLSX files are binary, not text. They are a zipped archive of XML files. You will not be able to convert an XLSX binary blob into a string directly. You are seeing question mark characters because the binary content cannot be rendered as text.
Parsing XLSX files in Apex will be very challenging to say the least, and the heap size limitation may be a serious hindrance. You will have a much better time building functionality in an off-platform service. I'd strongly recommend not going down this road.
That said, there is some prior art at least for creating XLSX files in Apex. See the answers on this question, which includes discussion of the Zippex Apex library for working with zip files.
