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Introduction

Text2tab is an utility to parse TAB-delimited text into an internal table of an arbitrary flat structure.

Features​

  • supports non-strict mode which allows to skip fields in the source data (for the case when only certain fields are being loaded).
  • supports corresponding parsing - filling only those fields which are in target structure. Kind of opposite to non-strict feature above.
  • supports header specification as the first line in the text - in this case field order in the text may differ from the internal abap structure field order.
  • supports loading into a structure (the first data line of the text is parsed).
  • supports type-less parsing, when the data is not checked against existing structure but dynamically create as a table with string fields.
  • supports specifying date and amount formats
  • supports on-the-fly field name remapping (e.g. field FOO in the parsed text move to BAR component of the target internal table)
  • supports deep parsing - filling structure or table components in the target data container

And vice versa - serialize a flat table or structure to text.

  • supports specifying date and amount formats, and line-break symbol

The package also contains 2 examples:

  • ZTEXT2TAB_EXAMPLE - simple parsing code
  • ZTEXT2TAB_BACKUP_EXAMPLE - example of DB table backup with serializer

Example of usage​

Source text file (CRLF as a line delimiter, TAB as a field delimiter)

NAME     BIRTHDATE
Alex     01.01.1990
John     02.02.1995
Lara     03.03.2000

Simple parsing code

types:
  begin of my_table_type,
    name      type char10,
    birthdate type datum,
  end of my_table_type.

data lt_container type my_table_type.

zcl_text2tab_parser=>create( lt_container )->parse(
  exporting
    i_data      = get_raw_text_data_above( )
  importing
    e_container = lt_container ).

... or a more complex one ...

types:
  begin of my_table_type,
    name      type char10,
    city      type char40, " <<< New field, but the text still contains just 2 !
    birthdate type datum,
  end of my_table_type.

...

zcl_text2tab_parser=>create(
    i_pattern       = lt_container   " table or structure
    i_amount_format = ' .'           " specify thousand and decimal delimiters
  )->parse( 
    exporting 
      i_data      = get_some_raw_text_data( )
      i_strict    = abap_false       " text may contain not all fields ("city" field will be skipped)
      i_has_head  = abap_true        " headers in the first line of the text
    importing 
      e_container = lt_container ).  " table or structure (first data line from text)

You can keep the object reference returned by create() and use it to parse more data of the same pattern.