PyRFC

Asynchronous, non-blocking SAP NetWeawer RFC SDK bindings for Python.

Features

• Client, Throughput and Server bindings
• Automatic conversion between Python and ABAP datatypes
• Stateless and stateful connections (multiple function calls in the same ABAP session / same context)
• Sequential and parallel calls, using one or more clients

Supported platforms

• Python 3

• Windows 10 and macOS >= 10.15 supported by pre-built wheels and build from source installation

• Linux wheels are supported by build from source installation only

• Prebuilt Centos wheels are attached to the latest release on GitHub

• Pre-built portable Linux wheels

  • are not supported, neither issues related to portable Linux wheels

  • ❗ must not be distributed with embedded SAP NWRFC SDK binaries, only private use permitted

• Platforms supported by SAP NWRFC SDK can be supported by build from source

Prerequisites

All platforms

• SAP NWRFC SDK 7.50 PL3 or later must be downloaded (SAP partner or customer account required) and locally installed

  • Using the latest version is recommended as SAP NWRFC SDK is fully backwards compatible, supporting all NetWeaver systems, from today S4, down to R/3 release 4.6C.
  • SAP NWRFC SDK overview and release notes

• Build from source on older Linux systems, may require uchar.h file, attached to SAP OSS Note 2573953, to be copied to SAP NWRFC SDK include directory

Windows

• Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2013 is required for runtime, see SAP Note 2573790 - Installation, Support and Availability of the SAP NetWeaver RFC Library 7.50

• Build toolchain for Python 3 requires Microsoft C++ Build Tools, the latest version recommended

• Build toolchain for Python 2 requires Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0

❗ Due to a change introduced with Python 3.8 for Windows, PATH directories are no longer searched for DLL. The SAP NWRFC SDK lib path is no longer required on PATH, for Python >= 3.8.

macOS

• The macOS firewall stealth mode must be disabled (Can't ping a machine - why?):

sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --setstealthmode off

• Remote paths must be set in SAP NWRFC SDK for macOS: documentation

• When the node-rfc is started for the first time, the popups come-up for each NWRFC SDK library, to confirm it should be opened. If SDK is installed in admin folder, the node-rfc app shall be that first time started with admin privileges, eg. sudo -E

SPJ articles

Highly recommended reading about RFC communication and SAP NW RFC Library, published in the SAP Professional Journal (SPJ)

• Part I RFC Client Programming

• Part II RFC Server Programming

• Part III Advanced Topics

Installation

pip install pynwrfc

Cython is required on Linux platforms, for the the default build from source installation method.

Build from source can be also requested on Windows and Darwin platforms:

pip install pynwrfc --no-binary :all:
# or
PYRFC_BUILD_CYTHON=yes pip install pynwrfc --no-binary :all:

Alternative build from source installation:

git clone https://github.com/SAP/PyRFC.git
cd PyRFC
python setup.py bdist_wheel
pip install --upgrade --no-index --find-links=dist pynwrfc

See also the pyrfc documentation, complementing SAP NWRFC SDK documentation.

Getting started

Note: The package must be installed before use.

Open Connection

In order to call remote enabled ABAP function module (ABAP RFM), first a connection must be opened.

from pyrfc import Connection
conn = Connection(ashost='10.0.0.1', sysnr='00', client='100', user='me', passwd='secret')

Connection parameters are documented in sapnwrfc.ini file, located in the SAP NWRFC SDK demo folder.

Call ABAP function modules

Using an open connection, remote function modules (RFM) can be invoked. More info in pyrfc documentation.

# ABAP variables are mapped to Python variables
result = conn.call('STFC_CONNECTION', REQUTEXT=u'Hello SAP!')
print (result)
{u'ECHOTEXT': u'Hello SAP!',
 u'RESPTEXT': u'SAP R/3 Rel. 702   Sysid: ABC   Date: 20121001   Time: 134524   Logon_Data: 100/ME/E'}

# ABAP structures are mapped to Python dictionaries
IMPORTSTRUCT = { "RFCFLOAT": 1.23456789, "RFCCHAR1": "A" }

# ABAP tables are mapped to Python lists, of dictionaries representing ABAP tables' rows
IMPORTTABLE = []

result = conn.call("STFC_STRUCTURE", IMPORTSTRUCT=IMPORTSTRUCT, RFCTABLE=IMPORTTABLE)

print result["ECHOSTRUCT"]
{ "RFCFLOAT": 1.23456789, "RFCCHAR1": "A" ...}

print result["RFCTABLE"]
[{ "RFCFLOAT": 1.23456789, "RFCCHAR1": "A" ...}]

Finally, the connection is closed automatically when the instance is deleted by the garbage collector. As this may take some time, we may either call the close() method explicitly or use the connection as a context manager:

with Connection(user='me', ...) as conn:
    conn.call(...)
# connection automatically closed here

Alternatively, connection parameters can be provided as a dictionary:

def get_connection(conn_params):
    """Get connection"""
    print 'Connecting ...', conn_params['ashost']
    return Connection(**conn_param)

from pyrfc import Connection

abap_system = {
    'user'      : 'me',
    'passwd'    : 'secret',
    'ashost'    : '10.0.0.1',
    'saprouter' : '/H/111.22.33.44/S/3299/W/e5ngxs/H/555.66.777.888/H/',
    'sysnr'     : '00',
    'client'    : '100',
    'trace'     : '3', #optional, in case you want to trace
    'lang'      : 'EN'
}

conn = get_connection(**abap_system)
Connecting ... 10.0.0.1

conn.alive
True

See also the pyrfc documentation, complementing SAP NWRFC SDK documentation.

How to obtain support

If you encounter an issue or have a feature request, you can create a ticket.

Check out the SAP Community (search for "pyrfc") and stackoverflow (use the tag pyrfc), to discuss code-related problems and questions.

Contributing

We appreciate contributions from the community to PyRFC! See CONTRIBUTING.md for more details on our philosophy around extending this module.