Smart Variant Management

The SmartVariantManagement control is a specialization of the VariantManagement control. This basic control handles the visual representation of the variants on the user interface.

The SmartVariantManagement control communicates with the sap.ui.fl flexibility layer. The flexibility layer provides a way to store and retrieve flexibility information, such as personalization data and variants for other controls.

The SmartVariantManagement control is used in the following controls:

• SmartFilterBar
• SmartTable

In order to use the SmartVariantManagement control, consuming applications have to provide the following information and comply with the interface standard:

• The control consuming the personalization (persControl)
• A type
• The name of the property describing the key
• Optional information about the data source

This information has to be transferred to the SmartVariantManagement control during creation using the personalizableControl association. To transfer the data, the sap.ui.comp.smartvariantsPersonalizableInfo class must be used.

The persControl must also be attached to the Initialise event of the control and call the initialise method of the control, for example:

jQuery.sap.require("sap.ui.comp.smartvariants.SmartVariantManagement");
jQuery.sap.require("sap.ui.comp.smartvariants.PersonalizableInfo");
var oSmartVariantManagement = new sap.ui.comp.smartvariants.SmartVariantManagement();
var oPersInfo = new sap.ui.comp.smartvariants.PersonalizableInfo({
		type: "filterBar",
		keyName: "persistencyKey",
		dataSource: this.getEntityType()
    });
   oPersInfo.addControl(this);

   oSmartVariantManagement.addPersonalizableControl(oPersInfo);

   this._fInitialiseVariants = jQuery.proxy(this._initialiseVariants, this);
   oSmartVariantManagement.attachInitialise(this._fInitialiseVariants);

   oSmartVariantManagement.initialise();

Once the SmartVariantManagement control has initialized the flexibility layer and retrieved the relevant changes, it informs the persControl about the ending of the initialization phase via the Initialise event.

In order to exchange data with the flexibility layer, the persControl has to provide the following public methods:

• fetchVariant
• applyVariant (oVariant)

The fetchVariant method is called by the SmartVariantManagement control every time this is triggered by interaction with the VariantManagement control and when executing a Save. In the latter case, the persControl has to return a JSON-compliant object. The flexibility layer treats this information as a black box. It does not manipulate this object in any way.

The applyVariant is called by the SmartVariantManagement control every time the user selects a new entry in the variant list. The previously stored JSON-compliant object will be transferred to the applyVariant method, and the persControl can now respond to the information stored in this object, for example:

sap.ui.comp.smartfilterbar.SmartFilterBar.prototype.fetchVariant = function() {
	var aFiltersInfo;
	var oVariant = {};
	aFiltersInfo = this._determineVariantFiltersInfo();

	oVariant.filterbar = (!aFiltersInfo) ? [] : aFiltersInfo;
	oVariant.filterBarVariant = this._fetchVariantFiltersData();

	return oVariant;
};

sap.ui.comp.smartfilterbar.SmartFilterBar.prototype.applyVariant = function(oVariant) {

	this._applyVariant(oVariant);
};