#26 A Tile Like Any Other

An app that is reached by pasting a URL is a demo. It becomes an application when it has a tile — and in the launchpad an abap2UI5 app is indistinguishable from the RAP and freestyle tiles beside it.

What is installed once. The launchpad loads a UI5 app from the system's UI5 repository, so the abap2UI5 shell has to exist there as one: the launchpad connector ships it through abapGit, as app z2ui5. That is one deployment for the whole system, not one per app — every abap2UI5 tile points at the same shell.

What is configured per app. A target mapping, with the app class as the parameter:

Semantic Object	Z2UI5_CL_MY_APP
Action	display
URL	/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/z2ui5
Parameter	app_start / Z2UI5_CL_MY_APP

A tile, a catalogue, a role — the Fiori administration the system already does, with nothing abap2UI5-specific in it except the parameter.

What the app can do inside. It knows where it is:

    IF client->get( )-check_launchpad_active = abap_true.
      client->follow_up_action( val   = client->cs_event-set_title_launchpad
                                t_arg = VALUE #( ( `Job Monitor` ) ) ).
    ENDIF.

Startup parameters from the target mapping arrive in client->get( )-t_comp_params, and navigation to another Fiori app goes through the launchpad's own cross-app navigation, so the shell's back button keeps working.

What to do when the tile is blank. The one recurring trouble is not the app but the UI5 app index after an abapGit import: run /UI5/APP_INDEX_CALCULATE, clear the HTTP cache in SMICM, hard-reload. The launchpad page walks through it with screenshots.

Public Cloud is a different door: there the launchpad is Build Work Zone, and the ABAP Cloud pages describe the setup.

One shell in the UI5 repository, one parameter per tile. No user can tell the difference.

Happy ABAPing! 🦖🦕🦣