Suggested Values for Input Fields
Users are often not sure what values they should enter in InputFields. For this reason proposals are provided for InputFields. The input help contains filter options and a large set of possible values that can be selected. Some users would appreciate extra guidance to using input help. Proposals have been created to provide this extra help. Proposals for an InputField work as follows:
You set the InputField.valueSuggest property to TRUE.
You bind the value of the valueSuggest property to an existing context attribute with an ABAP Dictionary type (or you define a value set for the context attribute).
You activate the application parameter WDALLOWVALUESUGGEST for your system or application.
You deactivate the Accessibility mode.
Unlike the classical ABAP Dictionary Search Helps the proposals for InputFields are always available locally, that is, they only apply to the current InputField and never to other InputFields, even if they are bound with another ABAP Dictionary search help through several output parameters.
Proposals attempt to be available as quickly as possible. The proposals trigger a roundtrip, without running the Phase Model. For this reason you cannot affect the results by means of action handlers or WDDOMODIFYIEW.
On the other hand, proposals mean more data traffic and can slow the server down. For this reason the application parameter WDALLOWVALUESUGGEST exists. As with all other application parameters, you can set it in the Web Dynpro ABAP application WD_GLOBAL_SETTING. Alternatively, you can override the settings in your application or configuration.
Note that the proposals do not support OVS, nor user-programmed input help.
Also note that the prosposals do not support data elements with a domain that differentiates between upper and lower case.
Patterns or wild cards (e.g. "*", "+") for ascertaining default values are not supported.
Not all ABAP Dictionary search helps are suitable for suggested values. With complex ABAP Dictionary search helps the proposals may not be very clear.
For example, you have activated proposals for an InputField with an ABAP Dictionary search help by binding the InputField to an attribute whose type corresponds to one of the fields of the ABAP Dictionary search help. This InputField is simply called a proposal field in this example.
The proposal function now attempts to determine all entries for which the proposal field begins with the user entries. All further search help fields are concatenated and displayed as a description text next to the selected values.
If the proposal field is not a key field, multiple entries can appear in the search help results with one and the same proposal field. Web Dynpro ABAP Framework selects one entry and displays it. This type of search help is not particulary suitable for proposals. For example, you could use one ABAP Dictionary search help with two fields for employeeMitarbeiter and home town. The search help is based on a data table which lists all employees and their home town. In this case proposals will work well for an InputField that is bound to an employee. If the InputField is however bound to a home townWohnort, the result for the proposals is a list of towns with some employee or other who lives there as the description text. This can be confusing for the user.
You can find an example in the system in component DEMO_VALUE_SUGGEST.
If the user enters the value A in the InputField for the airline, a dropdown list appears containing all the airlines that start with an A. The asterisk in front of an entry indicates the airline is contained in the personal value list for this user.