What is SAP ALV?


ALV stands for ABAP List Viewer. ALV gives us a standard List format and user interface to all our ABAP reports. ALV is created by a set of standard function modules provided by SAP.

ALV provides a lot of inbuilt functions to our reports and some of the functions  are listed below.

Sorting of records

Filtering of records

Totals and Sub-totals

Download the report output to Excel/HTML

Changing the order of the columns in the report

Hide the unwanted columns  from the report

Because of the above functions, ALV substantially decreases the report development time. ALV takes care of rendering the list and we can concentrate only on the data retrieval part.

Some of the function modules used to create ALV reports are listed below.

Function Module Description

REUSE_ALV_LIST_DISPLAY Display an ALV list

REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY Display an ALV grid

REUSE_ALV_COMMENTARY_WRITE Output List header information

REUSE_ALV_VARIANT_F4 Display variant selection dialog box

REUSE_ALV_VARIANT_EXISTENCE Checks whether a variant exists

REUSE_ALV_FIELDCATALOG_MERGE Create field catalog from dictionary structure or internal table

Advantages of ALV Reports

Better look and feel.

ALV report consists of some per-defined options like sort, filters, sum, downloading, print, changing the layout structure and many more.

List of Function Modules used to develop ALV reports

The below are the list of Function Modules we use to display ALV reports in different formats.

REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY. "Display ALV grid format

REUSE_ALV_LIST_DISPLAY. "Display ALV List format 

REUSE_ALV_COMMENTARY_WRITE. "Display Top of page, logo, etc.

REUSE_ALV_FIELDCATELOGUE_MERGE. "Used to generate field catalogue

REUSE_ALV_EVENTS_GET. "Use events in ALV

REUSE_ALV_HEIRARCHY_LIST_DISPLAY. "Display ALV Hierarchy 

REUSE_ALV_BLOCKED_LIST_DISPLAY. "Display blocked list

Simple ALV report.


DATA: it_spfli TYPE TABLE OF spfli.


SELECT * FROM spfli INTO TABLE it_spfli.


CALL FUNCTION 'REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY'

  EXPORTING

    i_structure_name = 'SPFLI'

  TABLES

    t_outtab         = it_spfli.


Serkan AKKAVAK

Computer Engineer BSc

SAP Department Deputy Manager

Contact : serkurumsal@yandex.com