General properties of ABAP Classes / Interfaces

Every day you create or change ABAP class in class builder. When you activate your change, have you noticed a series of objects with several “=” in the middle part of each?

Technically speaking, an ABAP class consists of several parts. In order to figure them out, I just create a simple class with the following source code:

CLASS zcl_abap_class DEFINITION
  PUBLIC FINAL CREATE PUBLIC .

  PUBLIC SECTION.

    DATA public_attribure TYPE i .

    TYPES:BEGIN OF ty_global,

            name  TYPE string,

            score TYPE i,

          END OF ty_global.

    METHODS public .

protected section.

  data PROTECTED_ATTRIBUTE type I .

  methods PROTECTED .

  PRIVATE SECTION.

    DATA private_attribute TYPE i .

    METHODS private .

ENDCLASS.

CLASS ZCL_ABAP_CLASS IMPLEMENTATION.

  METHOD private.

  ENDMETHOD.

  method PROTECTED.

  endmethod.

  METHOD public.

  ENDMETHOD.

ENDCLASS.

I have also generated a local test class for it via SE80. After activation, look into corresponding entry in TRDIR.

The object name under column NAME could be opened via SE38. Take CCAU for example:

So CCAU contains the source code of local test class implementation:

Here below is the list of each part and its meaning:

The constant of part name is defined in type group SEOP:

If you need to get the part name of a given class via ABAP code, you can use utility class CL_OO_CLASSNAME_SERVICE. There are corresponding getter method for each kind of part defined.

For example, if you need to get the part name of all methods of class CL_CRM_BOL_CORE, just set breakpoint in method CL_OO_CLASSNAME_SERVICE =>GET_ALL_METHOD_INCLUDES, and open the class CL_CRM_BOL_CORE in SE24, and click “Source Code-Based” button:

Here you can find the name class part for each method are populated with one incremental step in hexadecimal.