Technical Articles
Converting UUID between hyphened representation and RAW16
If you’ve been testing OData services for example with Postman lately, you’ve most likely come across the scenario where you need to convert a UUID (Universal Unique Identifier) between hyphened representation and RAW16. I’ve previously done this manually, but today I decided to find a class that could help me with this.
Example
Let’s assume that we want to test an OData service where one of the properties is the business partner GUID (Edm Core Type = Edm.Guid). The OData service expects this property to be supplied in hyphened representation (e.g. 0050569a-1453-1ed5-b9cb-7e54178c13f0
). In the SAP business partner table, the business partner GUID is however stored in RAW16 format (e.g. 0050569A14531ED5B9CB7E54178C13F0
).
It is trivial to manually convert between hyphened representation and RAW16, but I find this to be a bit tedious.
Solution
After some searching, I eventually came across the class CL_SOAP_WSRMB_HELPER
which can assist us when doing the conversion.
From hyphened representation into RAW16
The following unit test illustrates how the conversion from hyphened representation into RAW16 can be done:
" Convert UUID from hyphened representation into RAW16
" given
CONSTANTS uuid_raw_exp TYPE sysuuid_x VALUE '0050569A14531ED5B9CB7E54178C13F0'.
CONSTANTS uuid_hyphened TYPE string VALUE '0050569a-1453-1ed5-b9cb-7e54178c13f0'.
" when
DATA(uuid_raw_act) = cl_soap_wsrmb_helper=>convert_uuid_hyphened_to_raw( uuid_hyphened ).
" then
cl_abap_unit_assert=>assert_equals( act = uuid_raw_act
exp = uuid_raw_exp ).
From RAW16 into hyphened representation
The following unit test illustrates how the conversion from RAW16 into hyphened representation can be done:
" Convert UUID from RAW16 into hyphened representation
" given
CONSTANTS uuid_hyphened_exp TYPE string VALUE '0050569a-1453-1ed5-b9cb-7e54178c13f0'.
CONSTANTS uuid_raw TYPE sysuuid_x VALUE '0050569A14531ED5B9CB7E54178C13F0'.
" when
DATA(uuid_hyphened_act) = cl_soap_wsrmb_helper=>convert_uuid_raw_to_hyphened( uuid_raw ).
" then
cl_abap_unit_assert=>assert_equals( act = uuid_hyphened_act
exp = uuid_hyphened_exp ).
Happy converting!
This blog post first appeared on the Developer Voyage blog at https://www.developervoyage.com/2020/04/20/converting-uuid-between-hyphened-representation-and-raw16.html
Hi Johan,
I too had that issue some time ago and found the class CL_GDT_CONVERSION with its (class-)methods GUID_INBOUND and GUID_OUTBOUND which to the same job.
I'm not sure which class is "older" (in terms of available for a lower release), but maybe this will help somebody who needs this info.
Regards
Robert
Hi Robert,
Thanks for adding this alternative approach!
Kind regards,
Johan
There is the note 2619546 - UUID based on RFC4122 cannot be generated which improves CL_SYSTEM_UUID by implementing a new interface IF_SYSTEM_UUID_RFC4122_STATIC.
Johan Wigert Thanks for this guide! Is there a standard ABAP data element to store the hyphened UUID in an SAP table, or do you suggest to always convert to Raw16? I'm creating an iOS app in Swift and will need to store a Swift-generated UUID as key in a table. Would be nice to not convert back and forth 🙂
Thanks! In our use cases we never store the hyphened UUID in any SAP tables. We only use it in DTO classes and there we use STRING. I'm not aware of any standard ABAP data element which would be suitable.