by Craig Cmehil on September 8, 2006 at 12:23 am
This is a required patch for v0.1 of Scripting in a Box, please download this patch. This patch repairs the error not allowing one to start/stop and restart the Apache server process through Eclipse.
Also added is a optional check on the http://localhost:8080 index page to check for updates.
It has also been mentioned by a few users there is a problem when attempting to install new components or update exisiting plugins in Eclipse, it seems the following file missing: c:\Development\eclipse\features\org.rubypeople.rdt.source_0.8.0.604092300RC1\feature.xml simply copy the feature.xml from C:\Development\eclipse\features\org.rubypeople.rdt_0.8.0.604092300RC1 to C:\Development\eclipse\features\org.rubypeople.rdt.source_0.8.0.604092300RC1 and that should solve the problem.
by Craig Cmehil on August 2, 2006 at 9:41 am
I get this question a lot, and in fact since SDN is becoming more noticeable in the outside world and the fact that we have a growing and strong community and a decent size library of information, the question seems to be popping up more and more of late.
Why should I use PHP in my SAP landscape?
Well the bottom line is this, and I know that if someone really wants to make me look bad they’ll post this way out of context, “You should not use PHP in your SAP Landscape”, now the rest of it for those of you interested in the whole story. You should not use PHP in your SAP Landscape if you don’t already have it. No one, myself nor SAP is actually telling you to run out and learn everything you can about PHP. What is being said is simply this, “if you have PHP already in your landscape you don’t need to run out and learn something else”.
A lot of times someone will hear that they are installing SAP so they do a search and find all this information related to ABAP, Java, .NET so on and so forth so they think that all that work they’ve already done in PHP for their internal applications will have to be redone, removed or replaced. This is simply not the case, and that is the message I’ve been trying hard to get across. If you have PHP knowledge in house already and add SAP to the mix then you can still leverage that PHP knowledge and do not need to retrain all your developers in something other than the basics of how a SAP system works.
In fact with the release of NW04s the support for Web services is tremendous and therefore might make life even a little easier for your developers.
OK this was a lot shorter than I was thinking but I don’t want to confuse the bottom line message with clutter.
by Craig Cmehil on July 10, 2006 at 12:45 pm
It’s not a new topic but it is one that has not been covered very much, at least not together with SAP. Which do I mean? AJAX, one of the buzz words out there right now, so what is it, how do I get it into my application and why would I?
Well I decided the best way for me to describe it was to build on the work of others on SDN.
What I am going to do is take a simple ABAP FM, my trusty PHP connector for SAP and the RFC library and a very basic login.
<?php
// Inlcude Cmehil Functions
include "lib/sap.php";
// Include AJAX Agent
include_once ("lib/agent.php");
// Initialize AJAX Agent
$agent->init();
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>AJAX Agent connection to SAPRFC</title>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
function hide_uservalid(uid) {
document.getElementById(uid).style.display = "none";
}
function call_uservalid(uid) {
document.getElementById(uid).style.display = "block";
agent.call('','GetValid','callback_uservalid', uid);
}
function callback_uservalid(str) {
uid = str.substring(0,str.indexOf(':'));
str = str.substr(str.indexOf(':')+1,str.length);
document.getElementById(uid).innerHTML = str;
}
function call_usersearch() {
str = document.getElementById('q').value;
agent.call('','UserList','callback_usersearch', str);
}
function callback_usersearch(str) {
document.getElementById('div_user').innerHTML = str;
}
</script>
<form onsubmit="call_usersearch();return false;" method="post">
<b><span>Query</span>:</b> <input type="text" name="q" id="q" size="10">
</form>
<hr>
<div id="div_user"></div>
</body>
</html>
As you can see my initial, or “index.php” page is nothing special just a little JavaScript and some HTML and a tiny splash of PHP through in at the top.
Then I have two subfolders, one is “images” the other is “lib”, the “images” subfolder contains two images I snagged from my NetWeaver system:
The “lib” subfolder contains my “saprfc.php” file which comes with the SAPRFC for PHP download along with “agent.php” which comes with AJAX Agent which I decided to use to make life a bit easier for myself. You could also make the connections yourself, like in how Dan describes here in his blog.
The last item under “lib” is my own small collection of PHP functions.
<?php
// saprfc-class-library and custom library su01
require_once ("saprfc.php");
function login($user,$pwd,$host,$sn,$clnt) {
// Create saprfc-instance
$sap = new saprfc(array(
"logindata"=>array(
"ASHOST"=>$host // application server
,"SYSNR"=>$sn // system number
,"CLIENT"=>$clnt // client
,"USER"=>$user // user
,"PASSWD"=>$pwd // password
)
,"show_errors"=>false // let class printout errors
,"debug"=>false)) ; // detailed debugging information
return $sap;
}
function logoff($sap) {
// Logoff/Close saprfc-connection LL/2001-08
$sap->logoff();
}
function UserList($query) {
$listing = "";
// Login into System
$sap = login("bcuser","minisap","localhost","00","000");
// Call-Function
$result=$sap->callFunction("SO_USER_LIST_READ",
array( array("IMPORT","USER_GENERIC_NAME","*"),
array("TABLE","USER_DISPLAY_TAB",array())
));
// Call successfull?
if ($sap->getStatus() == SAPRFC_OK) {
// Yes, print out the Userlist
$i = 0;
$listing .= "<table cellpadding=\"4\" cellspacing=\"4\">";
foreach ($result["USER_DISPLAY_TAB"] as $user) {
if ($query == "*" || $query == "%" || stristr($user["SAPNAM"], $query)) {
$i++;
$listing .= "<tr><td><a href=\"#\""
. " onmouseout=\"hide_uservalid('".$user["SAPNAM"]."');return false;\""
. " onmouseover=\"call_uservalid('".$user["SAPNAM"]."');return"
. " false;\">".$user["SAPNAM"]."</a></td><td"
. " align=\"center\"><div id=\"".$user["SAPNAM"]."\""
. "></div></td></tr>";
}
}
$listing .= "</table>";
} else {
// No, print long Version of last Error
$listing = $sap->printStatus();
}
// Logoff System
logoff($sap);
// Now return the list
return $listing;
}
function GetValid($uid) {
$value = "";
$result = GetUserLogonDetails($uid);
$input = $result["GLTGB"];
// Yes, then get value
if ( strtotime("now") < strtotime($input) or $input == "00000000" ) {
$value = "<img src=\"images/s_S_OKAY.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"".$input."\">";
} else {
$value = "<img src=\"images/s_S_NONO.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"".$input."\">";
}
return $uid.":".$value;
}
function GetUserLogonDetails($uid) {
$value = "";
// Login into System
$sap = login("bcuser","minisap","localhost","00","000");
$uid = strtoupper($uid);
$result=$sap->callFunction("BAPI_USER_GET_DETAIL",
array( array("IMPORT","USERNAME",$uid),
array("EXPORT","LOGONDATA",array())
));
// Call successfull?
if ($sap->getStatus() == SAPRFC_OK) {
// Yes, then get value
$value = $result["LOGONDATA"];
} else {
// No, print long Version of last Error
$sap->printStatus();
}
// Logoff System
logoff($sap);
return $value;
}
?>
Really that is all there is two it. All of it together is similar to what Piers Harding created using Ruby. Although this is a strictly “read” only version and not so “flashy” as his.
I recommend you check the forum link (see ABAP FM) for some alternatives to the standard FM from SAP for better performance. I tested against a system with 436 users and the response was fine but the idea of grabbing the entire list of users each time you run the query is a bit much.
Ok now we have it, it’s pretty fast and easy but why do I want it? Well in my test system I pulled 436 users, my biggest query based search was 128 users now if you notice in the code I have it set that when you move your mouse over the User ID (onmouseover) it shows me whether they are valid in the system or not, this happens dynamically each time I move the mouse over the User ID. Now what happens in a traditional manner is that I would click on the name, it would show me the status after reloading the page AND the 128 users again remembering what the query was, where I clicked etc. This approach (granted not the best in terms of performance) does all of this without reloading the page. The other option would be of course to pul the list together with the status and just give me all of it at once, this also goes to show that there are a million and one ways to accomplish something – this way offers you the comfort of not reloading your pages for every action you wish to accomplish.
A nice definition and more information can be found on Wikipedia.
AJAX, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a Web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, and usability.
The following link is where you can actually download the entire demo and save typing it in.
Remember this is a small snippet to show the potential and in no way should this be taken as a productive example for wide use.
OK now with that all out of the way let’s take a look at what’s actually going on, you see things are triggered via a JavaScript method:
function call_usersearch() {
str = document.getElementById('q').value;
agent.call('','UserList','callback_usersearch', str);
}
function callback_usersearch(str) {
document.getElementById('div_user').innerHTML = str;
}
So we have the intital “call” function which pulls in any values we might want to pass to the PHP function which is done by the call to the AJAX Agent. Here we call the “UserList” PHP function which is known because of the inlcude library files. It also knows to pass in the “return function” as well as the parameter that is needed for the PHP function.
Once the PHP function executes all output is captured and returned to the “return function” which then sets the “content” area of our DIV tag with that very output. Thus we are dynamically changing elements on our page with output generated by the PHP functions.
That is actually a pretty low tech explanation but there is so much information out there on the topic I don’t want to bore you too much, unless you want me to then I promise my next blog will go into more depth than this surface level one.
by Craig Cmehil on April 24, 2006 at 6:41 am
So you’re a PHP developer and your company is running SAP, the problem though is you have no clue about SAP or what it does – you are curious though. The following are a few tips on making the cross over from building web applications to building SAP based web applications using PHP.
I won’t pretend to be an expert on how things work in the corporate/enterprise world nor will I even attempt at telling you how to do something inside your company. What I intend to do is is give you some tips/suggestions on approaching your SAP administrative team and ABAP developers in order to get you started.
Ok so let’s get some basics out of the way and then move into some possible secanrio’s on getting started. Continue Reading…
