ABAP communication with COMM Ports ( Serial Ports )

One need that sometimes arise, is to allow the system to communicate with scales, printers or other devices. As far as I know, there isn't a simple and straigth forward way to do that.
In this post I'll present a class to make this possible. This class uses OLE to allow the desktop PC to communicate using a serial port. In a future post, I'll show how to create a webservice, running in a given PC, that can be accessed by a SAP Server in order to allow the communication in background and/or allow any pc to read a remote serial port.
For now, this only works in the running PC and there is the need to create and register the MSCOMM32.OCX (I'll show how to create a script to do this for 32 and 64 windows)

1 - Download MSCOMM32.OCX ( for instance, you can download it from here : Link)

2 - Create a text file named comm.reg with the following content:
Windows Registry Editor version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\4250E830-6AC2-11cf-8ADB-00AA00C00905] "VALUE"="REG_SZ=kjljvjjjoquqmjjjvpqqkqmqykypoqjquoun"

3 - Create a batch file comm.bat with the following content:

copy MSCOMM32.ocx %SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\ if not exist %SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\mscomm32.ocx (copy MSCOMM32.ocx %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\) if exist %SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\mscomm32.ocx (regsvr32 /s MSCOMM32.OCX) if exist %SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\mscomm32.ocx (regedit /s comm.reg) if exist %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\mscomm32.ocx (regsvr32 /s MSCOMM32.OCX) if exist %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\mscomm32.ocx (regedit /s comm.reg)

4 - Place all three files in the same location and run, with administrator privileges, the comm.bat file).

5 - Now, the ABAP Class. Create the following class:

6 - Create these class attributes:

7 - Create these methods:

8 - Give these parameters to the created methods:

9 - Insert the appropriate code bellow in each of the corresponding methods:

method CLOSE. set property of w_connection 'PortOpen' = 0. endmethod. method CONSTRUCTOR. initialization( exceptions no_authorization = 1 object_not_created = 2 others = 3 ). case sy-subrc. when 0. if i_com_port is supplied. w_com_port = i_com_port. endif. if i_settings is supplied. w_settings = i_settings. endif. when 1. raise NO_AUTHORIZATION. when 2. raise OBJECT_NOT_CREATED. when others. endcase. endmethod. method INITIALIZATION. call function 'AUTHORITY_CHECK_OLE' exporting program = sy-repid activity = sabc_act_call application = 'MSCOMMLIB.MSCOMM.1' exceptions no_authority = 1 activity_unknown = 2 others = 3. if not sy-subrc is initial. raise NO_AUTHORIZATION. endif. create object w_connection 'MSCOMMLib.MSComm.1'. if not sy-subrc is initial. raise OBJECT_NOT_CREATED. endif. endmethod. method OPEN. set property of w_connection 'CommPort' = w_com_port. set property of w_connection 'Settings' = w_settings. set property of w_connection 'InputLen' = 0. set property of w_connection 'PortOpen' = 1. endmethod. method READ. data: l_buffer type i. clear: l_buffer, e_input. do 10 times. get property of w_connection 'InBufferCount' = l_buffer. if l_buffer > 0. get property of w_connection 'Input' = e_input. exit. endif. enddo. clear: l_buffer. free: l_buffer. endmethod. method WRITE. set property of w_connection 'Output' = i_output. set property of w_connection 'Output' = cl_abap_char_utilities=>cr_lf. endmethod.

10 - Enjoy :)