Exercise 4: Using Multiple Controls

Use

You can create multiple controls of the same type or of a different type in your program. In this exercise, you create a second editor window that is designed to be used as a clipboard for short texts.

Procedure

1. Create a new reference variable scratch to the class of the textedit control, and reference variable custom_container2 for the custom container control in your main program:

   DATA: scratch TYPE REF TO cl_gui_textedit,
        custom_container2 TYPE REF TO cl_gui_custom_container.

2. Create a new container MYCONTAINER2 for a custom control on your screen.

3. Create the control (including the custom container control) at PBO time and hide the status bar. To do this, insert the following lines of code into IF block IF EDITOR IS INITIAL:

   CREATE OBJECT custom_container2
         EXPORTING
            CONTAINER_NAME = 'MYCONTAINER2'
         EXCEPTIONS
            CNTL_ERROR = 1
            CNTL_SYSTEM_ERROR = 2
            CREATE_ERROR = 3
            LIFETIME_ERROR = 4
            LIFETIME_DYNPRO_DYNPRO_LINK = 5.
   
   
      CREATE OBJECT SCRATCH
         EXPORTING
            parent = custom_container2
            WORDWRAP_MODE = CL_GUI_TEXTEDIT=>WORDWRAP_AT_WINDOWBORDER
            WORDWRAP_TO_LINEBREAK_MODE = CL_GUI_TEXTEDIT=>TRUE.
      CALL METHOD SCRATCH->SET_STATUSBAR_MODE
         exporting
            STATUSBAR_MODE = CL_GUI_TEXTEDIT=>FALSE.

4. Activate your new objects, and start your program.

Discussion

In the PBO module, you create multiple controls and call additional control methods. Transferring methods to the frontend only requires synchronization at PBO end. This means the methods of two different instances use the same Automation Queue.

Theoretically, you can buffer as many method calls in the queue as you like. However, the system limits the runtime for RFC calls. If this limit is exceeded, you must introduce additional points of synchronization, since otherwise the backend terminates the connection. Generally, this is not due to the number of RFC calls, but to the data volume to be transferred in such a call (long texts, for example).