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ABAP Doc

ABAP Doc allows declarations in ABAP programs to be documented, based on special ABAP Doc comments. ABAP development environments that support ABAP Doc, such as ABAP Development Tools (ADT), analyze the content of ABAP Doc comments, convert it to HTML and display it appropriately.

ABAP Doc Comments

A comment for ABAP Doc is introduced using the string "!. This is a special form of a normal line end comment that is introduced using ". The following rules must be applied if an ABAP Doc comment is to be read correctly:

ABAP Doc comments are not allowed anywhere else.

If this rule is broken, a syntax check warning is produced.

Example

Basic use of ABAP Doc - comments as single lines, blocks and chained statements.

"! Basic usage of ABAP Doc
CLASS demo DEFINITION.
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    "! Constant character string for a single blank.
    CONSTANTS blank TYPE string VALUE ` `.
    "! Method to fill the private structure struct with values
    "! and append it to internal table itab.
    METHODS meth.
  PRIVATE SECTION.
    DATA:
      "! Three-component structure
      BEGIN OF struct,
        "! Component one
        comp1 TYPE i,
        "! Component two
        comp2 TYPE i,
        "! Component three
        comp3 TYPE i,
      END OF struct,
      "! Internal table of structure struct
      itab LIKE TABLE OF struct.
ENDCLASS.

Parameter Interface of Procedures

The parameter interface for procedures and for events in classes can be documented in the corresponding ABAP Doc commentary with a special syntax:

Documentation for Syntax
Interface parameters @parameter name|documentation
Class-based exception @raising name|documentation
Classic exceptions @exception name|documentation

If specified, @parameter, @raising, and @exception must be placed directly after "! and hence introduce a new line. The name (name) of an existing parameter or an exception must be specified after @parameter, @raising, @exception. This must be followed by the documentation (separated by |). This documentation is completed by the next @parameter, @raising, @exception or by the end of the ABAP Doc comment. In other words, no further documentation or interface documentation can be placed behind the interface documentation. Every interface parameter or every exception can only be specified once.

Note

The arrangement of the parameter interface documentation of procedures is not dependent on the order of the associated declarations. For reasons of readability, however, the order of the parameters and exceptions in the ABAP Doc comment should be the same as the order of the declarations.

Example

Use of ABAP Doc comments for the parameter interface of a method.

"! Method to check if two sources are identical
"! and that returns a corresponding boolean value.
"!
"! @parameter source1     | First source
"! @parameter source2     | Second source
"! @parameter ignore_case | Pass abap_true to ignore case
"!
"! @parameter result      | Returns abap_true if sources are identic
"!
"! @raising   cx_invalid_source
"!                        | One of the sources is empty
METHODS compare
  IMPORTING
    source1       TYPE text
    source2       TYPE text
    ignore_case   TYPE abap_bool DEFAULT abap_false
  RETURNING
    VALUE(result) TYPE abap_bool
  RAISING
    cx_invalid_source.

Formatting

The following tags are used in documentation texts for ABAP Doc comments, to format the documentation display in a development environment. These tags are a subset of the HTML tags.

Formatting Tag
Header, level1 <h1>...</h1>
Header, level2 <h2>...</h2>
Header, level3 <h3>...</h3>
Paragraph <p>...</p>
Italic text <em>...</em>
Bold text <strong>...</strong>
Unnumbered list <ul><li>...</li>...<li>...</li></ul>
Numbered list <ol><li>...</li>...<li>...</li></ol>
Line break <br>

An open tag must be closed before a new section of the ABAP Doc comment is started. A new section is introduced using @parameter, @raising or @exception.

The following attributes are possible:

Example

Use of formatting in an ABAP Doc comment for a class. The ABAP Development Tools display the documentation with the appropriate formatting.

"!<h1>Class demo</h1>
"!<p>This class must <strong>not</strong> be used productively.</p>
"!The class serves the following tasks:
"!<ul><li>Demo 1</li>
"!    <li>Demo 2</li>
"!    <li>Demo 3</li></ul>
"!<br><br>
CLASS demo DEFINITION.
  ...
ENDCLASS.

Short Texts and Their Synchronization

Parts of ABAP Doc comments can be flagged as short texts and the short texts of classes and function modules and their components can be synchronized with ABAP Doc comments. A part of an ABAP Doc comment can be flagged as a short text by being tagged as follows:

<p class="shorttext">...</p>

A paragraph tagged like this is displayed as a header in the display of the ADT documentation, instead of the short text shown in ABAP Workbench.

To synchronize the ABAP Doc short texts and the short texts shown in ABAP Workbench, the tag can be specified as follows (this is optional):

<p class="shorttext synchronized">...</p>

In this case, the length of the short text in ABAP Doc is restricted to the length of the matching short text in ABAP Workbench and is synchronized with the associated short text in the original language of the class or function module as follows:

An ABAP Doc short text is part of the source code and is not translatable. This short text replaces the translatable short text of the repository object in its original language when synchronized, which means it must also be specified in the original language. This is an exception to the rule that ABAP Doc comments must always be in English. The original language can be flagged in the source by being specified as follows (this is optional):

<p class="shorttext" lang="...">...</p>

The attribute lang uses the HTML standard. It must be used to specify the original language of the repository object as a two-character ISO ID. If not, a syntax check warning occurs. This attribute makes it clear in the source code which language the short text should be specified in. It is also planned to be used in future extensions for the translatability of short texts.

Example

See the class CL_DEMO_ABAP_DOC in a source code editor. It contains ABAP Doc comments for the class itself, for a type, for a method and its parameters, and for an attribute. The ABAP Doc comments include short texts that are synchronized with the short texts in ABAP Workbench in the original language English. The class can be copied to a standalone temporary class to test the synchronization.

Documentation Links

In an ABAP Doc comment, the following syntax can be used to link to the documentation of other repository objects:

... {@link [[[kind:]name.]...][kind:]name} ...

In curly brackets after @link, a path is specified to a repository object and hence a link to its documentation. When the documentation is displayed in ADT, a link is created here that displays the documentation of the repository object when selected (if this documentation exists).

kind cannot and must not be specified for global data types and object types (classes and interfaces). These repository objects are only addressed using their names. This applies specifically to CDS entities.

Example

Documents a local class html of a program using ABAP Doc comments that contain links to the documentation of a global class and to the ABAP Doc documentation of the current program.

"! Default html string for method {@link .html.METH:show}
"! of local class {@link .html}.
CONSTANTS
  default TYPE string VALUE `<html><body>Default</body><html>`.

"! <h1>Class html</h1>
"! Wraps {@link cl_abap_browser}.
CLASS html DEFINITION.
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    "! <h1>Method show</h1>
    "! Calls {@link cl_abap_browser.METH:show_html}
    "! of {@link cl_abap_browser}
    "! and passes parameter {@link .METH:show.DATA:html }.
    "! @parameter html | Parameter for
    "! {@link cl_abap_browser.METH:show_html.DATA:html_string}.
    "! The default value is {@link ..DATA:default}.
    METHODS show
      IMPORTING
        html TYPE string DEFAULT default.
ENDCLASS.

CLASS html IMPLEMENTATION.
  METHOD show.
    cl_abap_browser=>show_html( html_string = html ).
  ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

Guidelines

Programming Guidelines

The following guidelines for general comments also specifically apply to ABAP-DOC comments.