topic Re: Activate a macro variable via button control? in SAS Visual Analytics

Activate a macro variable via button control?

ender111 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 06:14:02 GMT

What I am trying to do is use a control on a visual to manually assign a variable that a SAS program can reference before a different report is opened.

is that possible? Can a button or drop down be used to store a macro variable somewhere that can be used by either a SAS program or a data plan?

I do not mean using a button or drop down to assign a parameter to be used by a visual. It needs to be used by a program or data plan.

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 07:36:51 GMT

Feeding a value into SAS code is done with user prompts in stored processes.

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

ender111 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:03:22 GMT

Stored Process is supposed to be available in the object menu under "Other", but is not present in my installation. Is there some other way to access a stored process via button or drop down object or assign a macro execution through a control on a visual or other object?

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

Madelyn_SAS — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:19:39 GMT

Which version of Visual Analytics are you using?

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

ender111 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:23:15 GMT

SAS VA 8.5.1.

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

KeithM — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 19:23:01 GMT

The easiest way to accomplish this is to create an action from the VA object that links to a SAS Job. For example, below I have a list table. When I click on the actions, I can link to a URL.

When adding the URL, paste in the URL for your job execution (http://YourVAServer.com/SASJobExecution). You then have the option to add a parameter. The parameter will be tacked on at the end of your URL, so in your SAS code for the job, you can just reference the parameter like a normal macro variable.

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

ender111 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 19:56:51 GMT

This is amazing. How do you reference the parameter in your code coming from the URL?

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

KeithM — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 21:52:48 GMT

Below is a very simple job. From the previous example, I'm passing in make. You reference make using &make in your SAS code. Put it in double quotes to evaluate.

* Write the custom HTML to _webout;

%global make;

data _null_;
file _webout;
put '<html>';
put '<head><title>Hello World!</title></head>';
put '<body>';
put "<h1>The selected car is: &make</h1>";
put '</body>';
put '</html>';
run;

Re: Activate a macro variable via button control?

ender111 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:58:53 GMT

Thanks, Keith. This was perfect. I had some trouble with assigning the variable on the URL end, but it was just necessary to input the optional target fields, then everything worked great. Job Execution was new for me so that took some getting used to, but is a very nice complement to report generating. Thanks again!