Excel::Writer::XLSX write urls greater than 255 characters

david2008 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all,

I have the following question.
I have an excel with very long urls.(length>255)
When i use the normal write function it does not work.
This is a known issue as explained in http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Excel-Writer-XLSX-0.69/lib/Excel/Writer/XLSX.pm#LIMITATIONS
So i have to resort to the write_string function.
The problem is that the url is html encoded. For example & is converted into &.

www.example.com?a=b&c=d
is converted into
www.example.com?a=b&amp;c=d
[download]

When i read the url back from excel with another program i have to decode the url which is an ugly workaround.
Is there a better way to handle this problem?

Thanks, David

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Re: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel write urls greater than 255 characters by rpnoble419 (Pilgrim) on Jun 30, 2013 at 12:37 UTC
Have you tried the new replacement module Excel::Writer::XLSX? According to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/get-external-data-from-a-web-page-HA010218472.aspx#BMcreate_a_web_query the length of the url is still limited to 255 characters. You may need to use a web shorting service to do what you want	[reply]
Re^2: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel write urls greater than 255 characters by david2008 (Scribe) on Jun 30, 2013 at 13:06 UTC
Hi, I had a typo and the subject should be really Excel::Writer::XLSX. The web shortening service is not applicable because of the internal businees logic of our process. Thanks, David	[reply]
Re^3: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel write urls greater than 255 characters by NetWallah (Canon) on Jun 30, 2013 at 17:14 UTC
How about building your own internal URL shortening service, using CGI::Shorten, which claims: This module may help you to build a personal shortening-link service. Feeding the long, verbose, and tedious url, it can return you a shortened one. And it can also print out redirection header in you CGI script. My goal ... to kill off the slow brain cells that are holding me back from synergizing my knowledge of vertically integrated mobile platforms in local cloud-based content management system datafication.	[reply]