Making Forms Available for External Applications

Prerequisites

Since XFP uses spool processing, at least one printer of device type XFP must be set up in the system.

Recommendation

In spool administration, we recommend that you set up an XFP output device. By default, this output device is used as a virtual device for connecting to the external application. You can override the default value by setting the output parameter IE_OUTPUTPRAMS of the function module FP_JOB_OPEN (ABAP Dictionary reference: SFPOUTPUTPARAMS-XFPOUTDEV).

More information:

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Form Interface Parameters of the Application

SAP Printing Guide (BC-CCM-PRN)

Context

Applications outside of the SAP system can process form data if you use the XFP output. In the XFP output, all form data is displayed in XML format. The output does not contain any layout information for the form. XFP output corresponds to XSF output for Smart Forms and RDI output for SAPscript.

Note

As an SAP software partner, you can have products that can process the XFP output certified at SAP.

Procedure

Set up the XFP output of the form in the calling application program.
Use one of the following options for the output of the XML data:
- XML data stream with context evaluation
  
  The data stream describes the structure of the PDF-based form at runtime with the data integrated from the application program. This means the form context is already evaluated, together with all its conditions.
- XML data stream without context evaluation
  
  The data stream contains the data from the application program, but the form context has not been evaluated.