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Custom ActiveX

Control in SAP GUI


A STEP BY STEP GUIDE
DR. KEREM KOSEOGLU

2015

Table of Contents
ActiveX Development in .NET.....................................................3
ActiveX Registration.................................................................7
ActiveX Wrapper in SAP............................................................8
Application in SAP...................................................................11

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ActiveX Development in .NET


Create new class library project.

Open AssemblyInfo.cs and make sure that the assembly is ComVisible.

Right click the project, select Properties. On the Build tab, ensure that
Register for COM interop is selected.

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Right click the project, select Add User Control and give it a meaningful
name.

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Prepare the GUI of your ActiveX control. Here is a simple GUI containing a
textbox:

Within the class file, ensure that you include the InteropServices library.

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Define an interface containing your variables and methods. Strings can be


shared with SAP directly, you need to experiment for other variable types.

Implement the interface into your ActiveX class, making sure that you
make it COM visible with a unique GUID.

At this point, you should be able to contain the ActiveX control in a regular
C# Forms project.

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Build the project in Release mode.

ActiveX Registration
Once you build the project, you will have a .DLL file.

Copy this file to C:\Windows\System32 . The path may vary from computer
to computer, but basically it needs to be under the system folder.
Now, open the command prompt as an administrator (meaning: Right-click
and select Run As Administrator). In this window, you should CD to
your .NET framework folder. The name & location of the folder may vary,
but you will get the idea from the screenshot below:

Here, you need to register your DLL file using the REGASM utility.

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Chances are, your SAPGUI might be an 32-bit application. In that case, you
need to put the DLL file into C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and run the REGASM
in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 .
Just to be on the safe side, I recommend taking both steps and register
the control for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.
Summarizing all the steps described above:
1. Put SampleSapActiveX.dll1 into c:\windows\system32
2. Run command prompt in administrator mode
3. Go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319
4. Type regasm c:\windows\system32\SampleSapActiveX.dll
/codebase
5. Put SampleSapActiveX.dll into C:\Windows\SysWOW64
6. Run command prompt in administrator mode
7. Go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
8. Type regasm C:\Windows\SysWOW64\SampleSapActiveX.dll
/codebase
Please note that the registration step needs to be executed for each and
every computer which needs to access & use the ActiveX control.

ActiveX Wrapper in SAP


Enter SE24 and create a new class.

1 Replace with your own DLL name


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Ensure that the class is inherited from CL_GUI_CONTROL.

In this class, you need to write a wrapper ABAP method for each .NET
method & property in your ActiveX control.

Here are the source code of those methods, which will give you an idea
about accessing properties & methods.

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You also need a constructor, which will basically contain the name of your
control (which was given in .NET). As the method signature, you can take
over whatever was provided by the superclass.

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Application in SAP
In this final step, we will create a regular GUI application in SAP. The
screen will have a custom container for the ActiveX control. Here is how
my sample screen looks like:

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Here is the minimum code required to run the ActiveX control:

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And voila; here is the result:

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For some interaction, you can add a user command routine:

Now, the buttons work too:

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