Less-known ADT features – expand components in the Internal Table debugger

Today I randomly discovered a useful feature in ADT and wanted to share it. It should help you with debugging large internal tables.

Let’s say you have a class or two.

CLASS zfh_class DEFINITION
  PUBLIC FINAL.

  PUBLIC SECTION.
    DATA: order type i,
          value type string,
          inner type ref to zfh_inner_class.

    METHODS constructor
      IMPORTING
        order TYPE i
        value type string.

ENDCLASS.



CLASS zfh_class IMPLEMENTATION.

  METHOD constructor.
    me->order = order.
    me->value = value.
    me->inner = NEW zfh_inner_class( order = order + 10 value = value && `DEF` ).
  ENDMETHOD.

ENDCLASS.

CLASS zfh_inner_class DEFINITION
  PUBLIC FINAL.

  PUBLIC SECTION.
    DATA: order type i,
          value type string.

    METHODS constructor
      IMPORTING
        order TYPE i
        value type string.

ENDCLASS.



CLASS zfh_inner_class IMPLEMENTATION.

  METHOD constructor.
    me->order = order.
    me->value = value.
  ENDMETHOD.

ENDCLASS.

So far, so good.

Now let’s make it a table of classes.

TYPES: tt_classes TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF REF TO zfh_class.
DATA: classes TYPE tt_classes.
DO 10 TIMES.
  APPEND NEW #( order = sy-tabix value = `ABC` ) TO classes.
ENDDO.

Still good.

Now let’s try to inspect them in the debugger. This is what the table debugger shows by default:

The variables view has no text filter and will force you to expand everything manually:

It’s in here somewhere…

The right approach is in the table debugger, which can show you the class properties using the Expand component option. It even works for nested classes!

I hope you’ve learned something new. Or possibly you’re not one of today’s lucky 10 000. Maybe next time!