Step 18: Icons

Our dialog is still pretty much empty. Since SAPUI5 is shipped with a large icon font that contains more than 500 icons, we will add an icon to greet our users when the dialog is opened.

Preview

Figure 1: An icon is now displayed in the dialog box

Coding

You can view and download all files in the Explored app in the Demo Kit under Walkthrough - Step 18.

webapp/view/HelloPanel.view.xml

<mvc:View
   controllerName="sap.ui.demo.wt.controller.HelloPanel"
   xmlns="sap.m"
   xmlns:mvc="sap.ui.core.mvc">
   <Panel
      headerText="{i18n>helloPanelTitle}"
      class="sapUiResponsiveMargin"
      width="auto" >
      <content>
         <Button
            icon="sap-icon://world"
             text="{i18n>openDialogButtonText}"
            press="onOpenDialog"
            class="sapUiSmallMarginEnd"/>
         <Button
            text="{i18n>showHelloButtonText}"
            press="onShowHello"
            class="sapUiDemoWTmyCustomButton"/>
         <Input
            value="{/recipient/name}"
            valueLiveUpdate="true"
            width="60%"/>
           <Text
              text="Hello {/recipient/name}"
              class="sapUiSmallMargin sapThemeHighlight-asColor sapUiDemoWTmyCustomText"/>
      </content>
   </Panel>
</mvc:View>

We add an icon to the button that opens the dialog. The sap-icon:// protocol is indicating that an icon from the icon font should be loaded. The identifier world is the readable name of the icon in the icon font.

Tip

You can look up other icons using the Icon Explorer in the Demo Kit.

The call any icon, use its name as listed in the Icon Explorer in sap-icon://<iconname>.

webapp/view/HelloDialog.fragment.xml

<core:FragmentDefinition
   xmlns="sap.m"
   xmlns:core="sap.ui.core" >
   <Dialog
      title ="Hello {/recipient/name}">
      <content>
         <core:Icon
            src="sap-icon://hello-world"
            size="8rem"
            class="sapUiMediumMargin"/>
      </content>
      <beginButton>
         <Button
            text="{i18n>dialogCloseButtonText}"
            press="onCloseDialog"/>
      </beginButton>
   </Dialog>
</core:FragmentDefinition>

In the dialog fragment, we add an icon control to the content aggregation of the dialog. Luckily, the icon font also comes with a “Hello World” icon that is perfect for us here. We also define the size of the icon and set a medium margin on it.

Conventions

Always use icon fonts rather than images wherever possible, as they are scalable without quality loss (vector graphics) and do not need to be loaded separately.