BAPI to Read Classification Information Maintained for an Object (Equipment/Material/etc)

By Sheetal Reddy Proddutur, CSC

Sometimes additional link information is useful when you link a document with an SAP object. Classification makes it possible for you to characterize a document - SAP object link (for example, Equipment sale price) by using characteristics.

For example, you can add additional price information, such as sale price, to Equipment.

You can maintain classification in either the document info record or in the master record for the object. You maintain the essential classification data in the classification system.  

Below steps are generally maintained by functional consultants.

Before you can use classification functions, you need to set up your classification system.

There are three steps to setting up a classification system:

...

1.        Defining the Properties of Objects

You use characteristics to describe the properties of objects. You create characteristics centrally in the system.

See the SAP Library, Characteristics (CA-CL-CHR).

2.        Creating Classes

You need classes to classify objects. These classes must be set up. During set up you must assign characteristics to the classes.

3.        Assigning Objects

Once you have created the classes you require for classification, you can assign objects to these classes. You use the characteristics of the class to describe the objects you classify.

This completes the data you require to use your classification system. You can then use your classification system to find objects that match the criteria you require.

Once you have set up the classification system you can use it to find certain objects. To do this:

• Find a class in which objects are classified

• Find the object(s) you require in the class

When you use classification to find objects, you use the characteristics as search criteria, and the system compares the values you enter with the values of the classified objects.  

Here we will see how to read values that are maintained in characteristics of a class.

In this tutorial we will get values of characteristics of a class maintained for Equipment.

1.     Go to IE03 -> enter

2.     Click class overview

3.     Here we can see the class type is ‘002’ , class ‘Z_EQP_DETAIL’ , Characteristic ‘Z_EQUIP_PRICE’ and value ‘10000.00’. (get Characteristic name as shown in below screen shots).

3.a select Characteristic and select ‘choose’ button

3.b select explanation button in the pop-up.

3.c  We can see Characteristic name and value

We will see how to read this value using BAPI.

Call BAPI ‘BAPI_OBJCL_GETDETAIL’  and pass below parameters.

Objectkey – Equipment number (130583)

Objecttable – Equipment master table (EQUI)

Classnum – Class (Z_EQP_DETAIL)

Classtype – Class type (002)

In the return parameters values are stored in table ‘allocvaluescurr’.

Read this table with key charact = characteristic name (Z_EQUIP_PRICE). Value is returned in ‘value_from’ field.