Web Dynpro ABAP UI Elements of the View

The provided UI elements are used to structure information and functions within the view. This means that they are crucial for the design of the screen layout. Therefore, multiple elements are available with a wide range of purposes:

Some elements are used for the graphical arrangement of UI elements like Group or Tabstrip. You can embed other elements into these elements. Elements like Table or TextView display data, the element InputField can be filled with values entered by the user. Interactive elements like Button or CheckBox are also provided. The following graphic shows a possible arrangement of UI elements in a view:

UI Element Properties

Each UI element has different properties. There are evident properties like background color or element width and several other properties used to specify a UI element. The properties are displayed in the View Designer in the properties table. This table is displayed for each UI element when the element is selected in the tree structure.

In this chapter, the UI element properties will not be described in detail but only used in examples. Refer to the reference section of this programming manual to get a complete list of all available UI elements including a description of their properties.

All static properties can only be entered into the table directly - for example, the ID of a table column.

Most of the properties, however, can be specified statically and also be bound to an element of the corresponding context.

For some properties, the binding to a context element is mandatory. For example, the data source of a table can only be specified when it is bound to a context element. To find out more about the structure of view contexts, and the binding of UI elements belonging to view contexts, see:

The Structure of the View Context, Data Binding of UI Elements in this programming manual, and chapter Context in the Architecture Manual for Web Dynpro.

Actions

In addition to the properties, possible events of UI elements - known as actions - are also managed in the table. Actions are provided for each UI element that expects an activity of the user - for example, a button or an input field. The corresponding event handler is created when you enter a name for the action in the properties table. When you double-click the action name, an ABAP Editor is called in which you can create the code for the event handler method.

The newly created event handler method is automatically inserted into the Methods tab. If other event handler methods for other buttons have been created in the current view, these methods are already entered in the Methods tab. They are offered for selection when you enter the name for the new action.

For more information on actions of UI elements, refer to:

● Chapter Actions of UI Elements in this programming manual

● Chapter Action in the Architecture Manual for Web Dynpro.