iSeries, AS400, IBM i, Programming

GETSPLF and PUTSPLF – read and write spools to physical files including all Advanced Function Printing Data Stream (AFPDS)

wow – that has got to be the longest url yet   😉

 

QSPGETF AND QSPPUTF APIs AND COMMANDS

IBM Knowledgebase item 8011926 describes two APIs that are undocumented in the AS/400 manuals. The two APIs, Get Spooled File (QSPGETF) and Put Spooled File (QSPPUTF), copy spool files to and restore them from physical files, respectively. The advantage of QSPGETF and QSPPUTF over the well-documented Copy Spooled File command (CPYSPLF) is that the APIs are able to copy Advanced Function Printing Data Stream (AFPDS) and Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) spool files, whereas CPYSPLF cannot.

You can call the QSPGETF and QSPPUTF APIs directly, or you can call them using command wrappers over the APIs.

  • Calling the APIs Directly

The QSPGETF API call below saves spool file QPRINT to database file SPOOLDB in USER1LIB library, member MBR1, where the spool file number is 1 and the spool file job is 010160/user1/dsp03:

CALL PGM(QSYS/QSPGETF) PARM(‘QPRINT ‘ ‘SPOOLDB USER1LIB ‘ ‘DSP03 USER1 010160′ X’0001’ ‘MBR1 ‘)

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AS400, Authority, IBM i, iSeries

I love a big fat spliff

Yes thats right. *SPLFS. IBM Spool Files. I sample several spliffs every day, so I want to keep them secure: Spool files and Printer security Question: I want to set up user profile who just can display spool file but who can not delete it. Answer 1. Spool file security is quite a bit different …

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IBM i

How to move all spool files to a new output queue on the IBMi

Recently at a client site, I heard a monotonous and really quite annoying sound: tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,TAP… tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,TAP… tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,TAP… tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,tap,TAP… coming from the adjoining Dilbert cubicle.

This prompted me to ask what he was doing. He reluctantly moaned that “I have to move all these spool files to another output queue and their are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them”

I looked quizzically until I realized he was in WRKSPLF on the green screen and was manually selecting each and every spool file with a 2 before paging down for the next screen, for as many screen as was needed, he then planned to change the output queue.

Wow!

Loads of time wasted doing a manual task when the tools to move the entire output queue are already right there in Windows but just didnt know about it.

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