Report and Export

Most screens in a system are reports: a few fields to narrow the data down, a table with the result, a total underneath, and a button that hands the same rows to Excel. In classic ABAP that is a selection screen and an ALV. In abap2UI5 it is one class with a form, a table and a download, and the selection logic stays the same.

The worked example is Z2UI5_CL_SMPS_APP_031 in abap2UI5/samples-stack (package 13). It reports on the travels of the business object Z2UI5_R_SMPS_TRV and exports with the XCO XLSX library.

The Shape of the App

Part	What it is
Selection	A SimpleForm: agency, customer, a window for the begin date, a row limit. Enter in a field searches
Result	A table, with the number of rows and the total per currency in its toolbar
Export	A button that writes the rows on the screen into an .xlsx file and downloads it

The report runs once on start, with an empty selection. A user who opens it sees data right away and narrows it down from there, instead of facing an empty table and a form.

Step 1: The Selection as Range Tables

Bind each field of the form to a component of one structure. When the search runs, turn each field into a range table: an empty field is an empty range, and an empty range selects everything. That is the behavior of a selection screen, without one IF per field in the WHERE:

DATA(t_agency) = VALUE ty_r_agency( ).
IF s_selection-agency_id IS NOT INITIAL.
  t_agency = VALUE #( ( sign = `I` option = `EQ` low = s_selection-agency_id ) ).
ENDIF.

A date window is a BT when both ends are given, a GE or LE when only one is. Two DatePicker controls with valueFormat yyyyMMdd deliver the dates in the internal format, so they go into the range unchanged.

Check what the user typed before it reaches the SELECT. A letter in a NUMC field is not an error in ABAP, it silently becomes zeros - and the report shows nothing without saying why.

Step 2: One SELECT

Read from the CDS view entity, not from the table. The view carries the field names the application uses and whatever the data model adds on top - associations, calculated fields, access control:

SELECT FROM z2ui5_r_smps_trv
  FIELDS TravelId, AgencyId, CustomerId, BeginDate, EndDate, TotalPrice, CurrencyCode, OverallStatus
  WHERE AgencyId   IN @t_agency
    AND CustomerId IN @t_customer
    AND BeginDate  IN @t_begin
  ORDER BY BeginDate, TravelId
  INTO TABLE @DATA(t_result) UP TO @max_rows ROWS.

The row limit is part of the selection, as on a selection screen. When the result reaches it, say so in the toolbar ("the first 200 - narrow the selection"), so nobody takes a cut-off list for the whole answer.

Step 3: Show the Result

The table's row type holds strings formatted for the screen: keys with ALPHA = OUT, dates with DATE = ISO. The total is calculated from the typed result of the SELECT, not from those strings, and once per currency - a sum across currencies is a number without a meaning:

LOOP AT t_result INTO DATA(result).
  DATA(total) = VALUE ty_s_total( currency = result-currencycode amount = result-totalprice ).
  COLLECT total INTO t_total.
ENDLOOP.

Step 4: Export What the User Sees

The export writes the rows that are on the screen, not the result of a second SELECT. The file then shows exactly what the user looked at, even if somebody changed the data in between:

LOOP AT t_travels INTO DATA(travel).
  APPEND VALUE #( a = travel-travel_id
                  b = travel-customer_id
                  ...
                  f = travel-status ) TO t_cells.
ENDLOOP.

DATA(xlsx) = z2ui5_cl_smps_xlsx=>write( t_cells ).

client->follow_up_action(
    val   = client->cs_event-download_b64_file
    t_arg = VALUE #( ( |data:{ z2ui5_cl_smps_xlsx=>mime_type };base64,{ cl_web_http_utility=>encode_x_base64( xlsx ) }| )
                     ( |travels_{ cl_abap_context_info=>get_system_date( ) }.xlsx| ) ) ).

The first row carries the column headers. A file name with the date tells two exports of the same report apart in the user's download folder.

z2ui5_cl_smps_xlsx is a small helper of the samples around the XCO XLSX library; Spreadsheet shows the same export with the on-premise APIs and with abap2xlsx.

Variants

• Export in the browser. For a table that is on the screen anyway, the browser can write the file itself, without a roundtrip - see Spreadsheet. The backend export is the right choice when the file needs more than the screen shows, or must look the same for everybody.
• Value help for the fields. An agency is easier to pick than to remember - see Value Help.
• Multiple values per field. A MultiInput with tokens maps onto the same range table, one row per token, with EQ and BT as the user entered them.
• Variants and filter bars. For many fields, a FilterBar with variant management saves the user's selections. Package 02 of samples-stack shows the classic FilterBar, Z2UI5_CL_SMPS_APP_493.
• Large results. A report that regularly finds tens of thousands of rows wants paging or an aggregation in the SELECT, not a longer table - see Size Limit.

Related

• Tables - columns, cells and toolbars.
• ABAP SQL and CDS - reading the data.
• Upload, Download - the download action.

Working Samples

Complete apps from the sample catalog that use what this page describes. Each is a single class in abap2UI5/samples unless its row names another of the three sample repositories — pull that repository with abapGit and start the class with ?app_start=<class>.

Sample	Class
Excel — Report with Selection and Export — A report as it is written every day - a selection with ranges, the result in a table with a total, and the same rows exported as .xlsx with XCO	Z2UI5_CL_SMPS_APP_031 · samples-stack, branch 13-excel-email