A waterfall chart, also called a cascade or bridge chart, is one of the most visually descriptive charts in Excel that can help you understand how an initial value is affected by a series of positive and negative values. In this article, you will learn how to programmatically create a waterfall chart using Spire.XLS for Java.

Install the Library

Spire.XLS for Java is a feature-rich API used to process Excel files in Java applications. The following are two methods to install it.

Method 1: Download and unzip it, then add the Spire.Xls.jar file to your project as dependency.

Method 2: Directly add the jar dependency to maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
        <name>e-iceblue</name>
        <url>https://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
        <artifactId>spire.xls</artifactId>
        <version>13.3.6</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Sample Code

To create a waterfall chart in Excel, Spire.XLS for Java allows you to add a chart to a worksheet using Worksheet.getCharts().add() method, and then you can set the chart type as waterfall chart using Chart.setChartType(ExcelChartType.WaterFall) method. The complete sample code is shown below.

import com.spire.xls.*;

public class WaterfallChart {
    public static void main(String []args){
        //Create a Workbook object
        Workbook workbook=new Workbook();

        //Load a sample Excel document
        workbook.loadFromFile("input.xlsx");

        //Get the first worksheet
        Worksheet sheet=workbook.getWorksheets().get(0);

        //Add a waterfall chart to the worksheet
        Chart officeChart=sheet.getCharts().add();
        officeChart.setChartType(ExcelChartType.WaterFall);

        //Set data range for the chart
        officeChart.setDataRange(sheet.getRange().get("A1:B5"));

        //Set totals for specific data points in the chart
        officeChart.getSeries().get(0).getDataPoints().get(2).setAsTotal(true);
        officeChart.getSeries().get(0).getDataPoints().get(4).setAsTotal(true);

        //Show the connector lines between data points
        officeChart.getSeries().get(0).getFormat().showConnectorLines(true);

        //Set position of the chart
        officeChart.setLeftColumn(1);
        officeChart.setTopRow(7);
        officeChart.setRightColumn(9);
        officeChart.setBottomRow(26);

        //Set chart title
        officeChart.setChartTitle("Company Profit (in USD)");

        //Show data labels for data points
        officeChart.getSeries().get(0).getDataPoints().getDefaultDataPoint().getDataLabels().hasValue(true);
        officeChart.getSeries().get(0).getDataPoints().getDefaultDataPoint().getDataLabels().setSize(8);

        //Set the legend position of the chart
        officeChart.getLegend().setPosition(LegendPositionType.Top);

        //Save the result file
        workbook.saveToFile("WaterfallChart.xlsx",FileFormat.Version2016);
    }
}