Export A List Of Source Members In RDi

I recently completed a development comprising a number of programs and display files. I knew that most of the objects had been delivered to our test machine as part of a PTF installation, and also that I had worked on some programs and display files post PTF.

But which objects did I need to send to the test machine. I had my Excel spreadsheet at the ready, and thought that I would have to manually type in the object name, find the last change date and time for its source and type that in and then perform my comparison with the objects on the test machine. And that was OK. I was happy to do that.

But then I thought it would be cool if RDi could somehow export a list of the source members I'd worked on for this project, along with the last source change time for each.

There is a way!

The way I organise my work in RDi is like this:

I create a member filter for each new project I start and amend the filter to include the source members I need to work on. Once I've finished a project, the source members listed in the filter are a complete list of everything I've worked on, and so it's a convenient list of all objects I need to deliver.

If you work like this, you can get an export list by right clicking on the member filter > Show in Table. Make sure that Last modified date and time are displayed in the table. If not present, click on the View Menu icon (the down arrow) > Show columns > All. Now, click on the same View Menu icon again > Export to File. Sadly, you can only export as *.txt (obviously, because exporting as .xlsx wouldn't be useful to anyone...). Give your export list a name, and save it somewhere. Next, open it with Excel and tell the wizard to use fixed width columns. It should be straight forward enough to understand where the columns start and end, but you get the chance to amend in later screens within the wizard.

Hey presto: a list of all deliverables for my project.

I changed the date format shown in the table to avoid battling with Excel's date formatting (because I don't know how): Window > Preferences > Remote Systems > IBM i > Table View > Date Column Format.

I'm sure an "Export as Excel Spreadsheet" facility is just around the corner.