ABAP Cloud Utilities

Table of contents

1. ABAP Cloud Utilities
2. Prerequisites
3. Installation
4. License
5. Contributors-Developers
6. Motivation for Creating the Repository
7. Available Utilities
8. Design Goals-Features
9. To-Do

ABAP Cloud Utilities

A collection of small, self-contained ABAP classes and utilities for everyday development on SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP ABAP Environment.

Every utility is written against the ABAP for Cloud Development language version, follows Clean Core principles, and consumes released APIs only. Each one is independent — take the class you need, leave the rest.

Prerequisites

• SAP S/4HANA 2023 (or higher) OR SAP BTP ABAP Environment
• ABAP language version: ABAP for Cloud Development
• XCO library availability
• Statement compatibility from v758 and Cloud

Installation

Install via abapGit into a package flagged as ABAP Cloud in the customer namespace.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Contributors-Developers

The repository was created by George Drakos.

Available Utilities

Utility	Package	Entry point	Description
XLSX	ZABAP_UTIL_XLSX	ZCL_XLSX	Reads and writes XLSX workbooks on top of the released XCO XLSX APIs. Split into ZIF_XLSX_READER and ZIF_XLSX_WRITER so a consumer depends only on the direction it needs. Errors surface through ZCX_XLSX.
System variables	ZABAP_UTIL_SY	ZCL_SY	Cloud-safe replacement for the classic SY structure. ZIF_SY never raises and covers user, client, system, date, time and message fields; ZIF_SY_USER_INFO adds the descriptive user attributes that can fail and surface through ZCX_SY.
JSON	ZABAP_UTIL_JSON	ZCL_JSON	Serializes ABAP data to JSON and back on top of the released XCO JSON APIs. Split into ZIF_JSON_READER and ZIF_JSON_WRITER so a consumer depends only on the direction it needs. Errors surface through ZCX_JSON.
XString	ZABAP_UTIL_XSTRING	ZCL_XSTRING	Converts byte strings to and from text, Base64 and hexadecimal, cuts and searches them by byte position, and assembles them from parts. Split into ZIF_XSTRING_READER and ZIF_XSTRING_WRITER so a consumer depends only on the direction it needs. Errors surface through ZCX_XSTRING.
String	ZABAP_UTIL_STRING	ZCL_STRING	Immutable view on a text that cuts it into the parts a caller needs: delimited fields, tokens, lines, fixed size chunks, name and value pairs, and the text enclosed by two markers. One interface ZIF_STRING covers the whole surface; operations that yield a single text hand back a new view, so they chain. Errors surface through ZCX_STRING.
Date	ZABAP_UTIL_DATE	ZCL_DATE	Calendar arithmetic on ABAP dates: quarters, ISO weeks, month, quarter and year boundaries, and shifting by days, months and years. ZIF_DATE is an immutable value object, so a calculation returns a new date instead of changing its input. Errors surface through ZCX_DATE.

Each utility ships with its own ABAP Doc documentation and unit tests.

XLSX

Facade over the XCO XLSX APIs with a factory entry point.

Interface	Purpose
ZIF_XLSX_READER	Opens a workbook from xstring and reads sheets and cell ranges
ZIF_XLSX_WRITER	Builds a workbook from internal tables and returns it as xstring

Known limitation: worksheet renaming is constrained on ABAP 7.58, so a generated workbook can still carry the default Sheet1 name.

System variables

ZIF_SY is the single place in a code base that touches sy. Consumers inject the interface instead of reading system fields, which makes them mockable with CL_ABAP_TESTDOUBLE.

SY field	ZIF_SY	Source
SY-UNAME	user_name( )	CL_ABAP_CONTEXT_INFO
SY-LANGU	language( )	XCO
SY-ZONLO	time_zone( )	XCO
SY-DATUM	system_date( )	CL_ABAP_CONTEXT_INFO
SY-UZEIT	system_time( )	CL_ABAP_CONTEXT_INFO
SY-DATLO	user_date( )	XCO
SY-TIMLO	user_time( )	XCO
—	timestamp( )	utclong_current( )
SY-MANDT	client( )	SY
SY-SYSID	system_id( )	SY
SY-SUBRC	subrc( )	SY
SY-DBCNT	db_count( )	SY
SY-BATCH	is_batch( )	SY
SY-MSGID … SY-MSGV4	message( )	SY

ZIF_SY_USER_INFO adds alias( ), formatted_name( ) and language_iso( ). The last two raise ZCX_SY because the underlying context API can fail.

Not covered on purpose: SY-INDEX and SY-TABIX are bound to the loop of the calling processing block, so a wrapper method would return a different value than the caller expects — read them directly. SY-ABCDE, SY-SAPRL, SY-DBSYS and SY-OPSYS are not readable in ABAP for Cloud Development at all.

JSON

Facade over the XCO JSON APIs with a factory entry point.

Interface	Purpose
ZIF_JSON_WRITER	Serializes any ABAP data object into a JSON string, optionally transforming the member names to camelCase or PascalCase
ZIF_JSON_READER	Deserializes a JSON string into an ABAP data object; JSON booleans arrive as abap_bool
ZIF_JSON_TYPES	Naming convention shared by both directions: unchanged, camel_case, pascal_case

Known limitations on this release: abap_bool fields serialize as the strings "X" / "" because XCO offers no ABAP-to-boolean transformation for the outbound direction, and components typed REF TO cannot be filled from JSON — the reader rejects such targets up front instead of letting XCO end in the runtime error XML_FORMAT_ERROR.

XString

Facade over CL_ABAP_CONV_CODEPAGE and the XCO Base64 encoding, with one factory entry point per input representation: for_xstring, for_text, for_base64, for_hex and builder.

Interface	Purpose
ZIF_XSTRING_READER	Immutable view on a byte string: length( ), rendering as text, Base64 or hexadecimal, and positional access through section( ), starts_with( ), ends_with( ), has_part( ) and offset_of( )
ZIF_XSTRING_WRITER	Fluent builder that appends raw bytes, text, Base64 or hexadecimal and is closed with build( )

Code page names are plain strings, so any code page the system knows can be used. ZCL_XSTRING=>code_page carries constants for the common ones (utf_8, utf_16be, utf_16le, iso_8859_1, iso_8859_7); leaving the parameter empty means UTF-8.

The utility is deliberately strict. Base64 and hexadecimal input is validated before it reaches the conversion engine, so a malformed string is answered with ZCX_XSTRING instead of an uncatchable runtime error — but that also means no line breaks and no blanks are tolerated, so strip MIME wrapping before calling. Likewise, a character that has no representation in the target code page raises instead of being silently replaced by a placeholder.

String

Facade over the built-in string functions with a single factory entry point, for_text. Everything sits on one interface, ZIF_STRING, because every method answers the same question: which parts does this text consist of.

Method	Purpose
split_by( )	Cuts at every delimiter and keeps the empty parts, so n delimiters always give n + 1 fields
split_tokens( )	The same cut, but every part is trimmed and the empty ones are dropped
split_lines( )	Cuts into lines, recognising CRLF, LF and CR in the same text
split_fixed( )	Cuts into chunks of equal size, the last one carries the rest
split_pairs( )	Reads COLOR=RED;SIZE=L into a name and value table, both sides trimmed
extract_between( )	The text enclosed by two markers, the markers excluded
extract_all_between( )	Every text enclosed by the two markers
trim( )	Removes a set of characters from both ends, the inner text stays untouched
as_text( ), length( )	The text behind the view and its character count

Operations that produce a single text return a new ZIF_STRING and therefore chain: zcl_string=>for_text( raw )->trim( )->split_tokens( ',' ). Operations that produce several texts are terminal and return a table.

Exceptions are reserved for invalid arguments — an empty delimiter, a chunk size below one. A marker or delimiter that simply does not occur in the text is not an error and answers with an empty result, so the extract operations never need a TRY.

Date

Facade over native date arithmetic and the released XCO date API, with one factory entry point per input representation: for_date, for_iso and for_parts, plus is_valid for checking an input without raising.

Interface	Purpose
ZIF_DATE	Immutable date. Calendar parts (year, quarter, weekday, day_of_year, days_in_month, iso_week, iso_year), boundaries (first_day_of_month through last_day_of_week), arithmetic (add_days, add_months, add_months_ultimo, add_years) and questions (is_leap_year, is_weekend, is_between, days_until)

The utility never reads the system context, so it has no dependency on ZCL_SY and needs no clock to be testable — the date always enters as a parameter and the caller decides where "today" comes from.

Design Goals-Features

• ABAP Cloud / Clean Core compatibility — passes the ATC variant ABAP_CLOUD_DEVELOPMENT_DEFAULT
• Released APIs only (release contract C1) — no access to SAP standard tables, no non-released function modules
• Clean Code following the Clean ABAP Style Guides
• Modern ABAP syntax (7.58 / 9.14) — expressions, inline declarations, string templates
• Interface-based public surface, so every utility can be mocked in consumer tests
• Unit tested with ABAP Unit and CL_ABAP_TESTDOUBLE
• Documented with ABAP Doc on every public declaration
• No cross-dependencies between utilities — install only what you need

To-Do

Utilities planned for the next iterations:

• String formatting — padding, alignment, case conversion and template helpers
• Regular expressions — reusable, named and tested pattern building blocks on top of CL_ABAP_REGEX and CL_ABAP_MATCHER
• Date functions — quarter, week, first and last day helpers on top of XCO_CP_TIME
• HTTP client — fluent request builder and immutable response on top of CL_HTTP_DESTINATION_PROVIDER and IF_WEB_HTTP_CLIENT
• Email — recipients, plain text and HTML bodies and attachments on top of CL_BCS_MAIL_MESSAGE
• Hash and UUID — message digests and identifier formatting on top of XCO_CP_HASH and XCO_CP_UUID