Step 35: Responsiveness

In this step, we improve the responsiveness of our app. SAPUI5 applications can be run on phone, tablet, and desktop devices and we can configure the application to make best use of the screen estate for each scenario. Fortunately, SAPUI5 controls like the sap.m.Table already deliver a lot of features that we can use.

Preview

Figure 1: A responsive table is hiding some of the columns on small devices

Coding

You can view and download all files in the Explored app in the Demo Kit under Walkthrough - Step 35.

webapp/view/InvoiceList.view.xml

<mvc:View
		controllerName="sap.ui.demo.wt.controller.InvoiceList"
		xmlns="sap.m"
		xmlns:mvc="sap.ui.core.mvc">
	<Table
		id="invoiceList"
		class="sapUiResponsiveMargin"
		width="auto"
		items="{
			path : 'invoice>/Invoices',
			sorter : {
				path : 'ShipperName',
				group : true
			}
		}">
		<headerToolbar>
			<Toolbar>
				<Title text="{i18n>invoiceListTitle}"/>
				<ToolbarSpacer/>
				<SearchField width="50%" search="onFilterInvoices"/>
			</Toolbar>
		</headerToolbar>
		<columns>
			<Column
				hAlign="End"
				minScreenWidth="Small"
				demandPopin="true"
				width="4em">
				<Text text="{i18n>columnQuantity}"/>
			</Column>
			<Column>
				<Text text="{i18n>columnName}"/>
			</Column>
			<Column
				minScreenWidth="Small"
				demandPopin="true">
				<Text text="{i18n>columnStatus}"/>
			</Column>
			<Column
				minScreenWidth="Tablet"
				demandPopin="false">
				<Text text="{i18n>columnSupplier}"/>
			</Column>
			<Column
				hAlign="End">
				<Text text="{i18n>columnPrice}"/>
			</Column>
		</columns>
		<items>
			<ColumnListItem
				type="Navigation"
				press="onPress">
				<cells>
					<ObjectNumber number="{invoice>Quantity}" emphasized="false"/>
					<ObjectIdentifier title="{invoice>ProductName}"/>
					<Text text="{
						path: 'invoice>Status',
						formatter: '.formatter.statusText'
					}"/>
					<Text text="{invoice>ShipperName}"/>
					<ObjectNumber
						number="{
							parts: [{path: 'invoice>ExtendedPrice'}, {path: 'view>/currency'}],
							type: 'sap.ui.model.type.Currency',
							formatOptions: {
								showMeasure: false
							}
						}"
						unit="{view>/currency}"
						state="{= ${invoice>ExtendedPrice} > 50 ? 'Error' : 'Success' }"/>
				</cells>
			</ColumnListItem>
		</items>
	</Table>

</mvc:View>

We exchange the list with a table simply by replacing the tag <List> with <Table>. The table has a built-in responsiveness feature that allows us to make the app more flexible. The table and the list share the same set of properties so we can simply reuse these and also the sorter.

Since a table has multiple cells in each row, we have to define columns for our table and name these according to the data. We add five sap.m.Column controls to the column aggregation and configure each one a bit differently:

Quantity

This column will contain a short number, so we set the alignment to End (which means "right" in LTR languages) and the width to 4em which is long enough for the column description. As a description text we use a sap.m.Text control that references a property of the resource bundle. We set the property minScreenWidth to Small to indicate that this column is not so important on phones. We will tell the table to display this column below the main column by setting the property demandPopin to true.
Name

Our main column that has a pretty large width to show all the details. It will always be displayed.
Status

The status is not so important, so we also display it below the name field on small screens by setting minScreenWidth to small and demandPopin to true
Supplier

We completely hide the Supplier column on phone devices by setting minScreenWidth to Tablet and demandPopin to false.
Price

This column is always visible as it contains our invoice price.

Instead of the ObjectListItem that we had before, we will now split the information onto the cells that match the columns defined above. Therefore we change it to a ColumnListem control with the same attributes, but now with cells aggregation. Here we create five controls to display our data:

Quantity

A simple sap.m.ObjectNumber control that is bound to our data field.
Name

A sap.m.ObjectIdentifier controls that specifies the name.
Status

A sap.m.Text control with the same formatter as before.
Supplier

A simple sap.m.Text control.
Price

An ObjectNumber control with the same formatter as the attributes number and numberUnit from the previous steps.

Now we have defined our table responsively and can see the results when we decrease the browsers screen size. The Supplier column is not shown on phone sizes and the two columns Quantity and Status will be shown below the name.

webapp/i18n/i18n.properties

# App Descriptor
appTitle=Hello World
appDescription=A simple walkthrough app that explains the most important concepts of SAPUI5

# Hello Panel
showHelloButtonText=Say Hello
helloMsg=Hello {0}
homePageTitle=Walkthrough
helloPanelTitle=Hello World
openDialogButtonText=Say Hello With Dialog
dialogCloseButtonText=Ok

# Invoice List
invoiceListTitle=Invoices
invoiceStatusA=New
invoiceStatusB=In Progress
invoiceStatusC=Done
columnQuantity=Quantity
columnName=Name
columnSupplier=Supplier
columnStatus=Status
columnPrice=Price

# Detail Page
detailPageTitle=Walkthrough - Details
ratingConfirmation=You have rated this product with {0} stars

# Product Rating
productRatingLabelInitial=Please rate this product
productRatingLabelIndicator=Your rating: {0} out of {1}
productRatingLabelFinal=Thank you!
productRatingButton=Rate

We add the column names and the attribute titles to our i18n file.

We can see the results when we decrease the browser's screen size or open the app on a small device.

Conventions

Optimize your application for the different screen sizes of phone, tablet, and desktop devices.