ABAP Coding

Now, since I always learn things the hard way, and if you’ve been reading my posts for any length of time, you’ll know that I can be a bonehead when it comes to things…  but I’m too stubborn to give up (hence why I’m writing this post.  ha ha ha).  Anyway, my latest discovery was in the testing of my new dynamic table.  I really needed a table with some editable fields, but in the creation of my table, the context node was empty.  So the table was being created, but there were no lines in the table.  Well, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but my brain was moving a little slow, so I didn’t grasp that the dynamic table was empty…  thus, impossible to see if there were any fields editable.

So, short story, you need to populate at least one row in the table, even if it’s empty.  Here’s an example:

* navigate from <CONTEXT> to <NOT_ITEM> via lead selection
lo_nd = wd_context->get_child_node( name = wd_this->wdctx_item ).
lo_nd->get_static_attributes_table( importing table = lt ).
IF lt IS INITIAL.
APPEND wa to lt.
lo_nd->bind_table( new_items = lt set_initial_elements = abap_true ).
ENDIF.

this simple addition, and suddenly I could see my editable fields in my dynamic table.  Probably obvious to a lot of folks, but yet another lesson learned in my never ending journey.

Thanks for reading.

 

Well, as it turns out, I didn’t figure out everything I needed for a dynamic table.  =)  The dynamic table code that I previously talked about works great, until you want to control the read only vs. editable aspects of the table.  I found a great way of creating a Dynamic Table in ABAP Web Dynpro that gives me the control that I needed to do allow for editing.

First things first, you need to create a context node and the attributes for to define the table.  You could do this dynamically, but I’m finding it’s cleaner to build it normally.  Either way, once it exists, here how to build the dynamic table.

*** create dynamic table for Notification – Items
cl_wd_table=>new_table(
exporting
id = ‘TB_TABLE’
bind_data_source = ‘CONTEXT_NODE’
visible_row_count = 5
read_only  = abap_false
receiving
control = l_table ).

*** build table columns
loop at <cols> into wa_config.
wa_cols = cl_wd_table_column=>new_table_column( ).

*For Dynamically creating Input Field
CASE type.
when ‘TEXT’ OR ‘TIME’ or ‘DATE’ or ‘DROPDOWN’.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_input_field=>new_input_field
EXPORTING
bind_value = lv_bind
id         = lv_id
state      = lv_state
read_only  = abap_false
on_enter   = ‘ON_ENTER’
RECEIVING
control    = lr_input.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_input ).
when ‘CHECK’.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_checkbox=>new_checkbox
EXPORTING
bind_checked = lv_bind
id           = lv_id
state        = lv_state
RECEIVING
control      = lr_check.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_check ).
ENDCASE.
ELSE.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_text_view=>new_text_view
EXPORTING
bind_text  = lv_bind
id         = lv_id
RECEIVING
control    = lr_textview.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_textview ).
ENDIF.

l_col_hdr = cl_wd_caption=>new_caption( ).
l_col_hdr->set_text( lv_col_text ).
wa_cols->set_header( l_col_hdr ).

l_table->add_column( wa_cols ).
endloop.

l_root ?= view->get_element( ‘TC_XXX’ ).
grid_data = cl_wd_grid_data=>new_grid_data( l_table ).
l_table->set_layout_data( grid_data ).
l_root->add_child( l_table ).
Now this code obviously won’t work out of the box, but you should be able to get the idea of how to use it.  If you have questions on this let me know and I can expand on the code provided.  Thanks for reading.

 

Well, this is a continuation of my post from yesterday, so if you missed it, I talked about using the ABAP Web Dynpro Download element to display documents on your web application.  What I talked about yesterday was completely based on having a spool job to convert.  So…  today I’ll talk about how you can Spool SD Output Documents again and again, and easily retrieve them.

SUBMIT RSNAST00
WITH S_KAPPL = i_kappl
WITH S_OBJKY = i_objky
WITH S_KSCHL = i_kschl
WITH P_AGAIN = ‘X’
WITH P_SUFF2 = lv_suff2
AND RETURN.

You might already be familiar with the program RSNAST00, but who knew you could use it for this (I didn’t…  =>  ).  You’ll notice, it’s a pretty simple program.  You give the Output type, the document key, and you can even using define a special key field (SUFF2) that makes it easier to retrieve.

After you run the program, simply go to table TSP01 and enter in the enough criteria to pull out the spool. Then you simply assign this to a context element, and link it to your download element.  And by doing this it will give you another popup window in your favorite web browser showing your output.

Now for my shameless plug.  I’ve done this all in Rapier now (it’ll be released in version 2 this fall), but thanks to this technique, I’ve been able to output Order Confirmations, invoices, etc…  directly onto the customer website, so they pull their own documents anytime they want.  If you’re interested in seeing this in action, let me know and I’ll be happy to setup a demo to show you.  Rapier 2.0 is gonna be really cool.  I’ve been putting a lot of hours into this recently, so you’ll want to check it out.  And, remember, if you’re in the market and you buy now, you get the charter customer price, and the ability to influence functionality that will be officially released this fall.    Ok… commercial over… =)

Thanks for reading,

One of my recent adventures was find a way to pull documents out of SAP, and display them within my web application.  This turned out to be rather challenging, but I learned some neat tricks about ABAP Web Dynpro along the way.  The Web Dynpro Download Element is one of my new favorites, once I figured out how I could use it.

Let’s set the stage.  You have a document withing SAP that you want to display to your web user.  The Web Dynpro Download Element works perfectly for this…  provided you can feed it the proper data.  What I figured out is that in order to make this work, you need to get your document into an XSTRING format.  I think this is a RAW string or something like that, but it’s not important.  What is important is how do you get it into the XSTRING format.  One of the cool tricks I found online was using the following function module:

CONVERT_OTFSPOOLJOB_2_PDF

This function will convert a spool job into the XSTRING format you need to output it.  Now, getting things into the spool can be another headache, so tomorrow I’ll talk about how to get your standard SD documents into the spool again so you can read them out of the Web Dynpro Download Element.

Thanks for reading,

 

Here’s a cool little trick that I picked up in order to make my dynamic screens even more dynamic.  The reset_view statement turned out to be the piece of the puzzle I needed in order to to have a dynamic screen with multiple variations.  While this may be outside the norm, it’s still a great little trick, and let me show you why.

Here’s the scenario.  I’ve created a view with a set of dynamic elements.  Now the trick comes in that depending on the scenario, even that dynamic screen might change.  When I first set it up, I kept getting a short dump because the system was trying to recreate dynamic elements that already existed.  By adding the statement:

  view->reset_view( ).

at the beginning of the WDDOMODIFYVIEW (which is where I do all of my initialization for the view) that reset the stage, so that I could “rebuild” the view with any elements that I needed.

While this isn’t earth shattering, it just might be the trick you need to keep your ideas flowing.

Thanks for reading,