element information in ADT for Eclipse

Dear Community, this blog is about the “Element Information Popup” and “ABAP Element Info View” of the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse. Both are really helpful functions to collect information.

The “Element Information Popup” can be called context-sensitive by pressing the F2 key when the cursor is positioned on a statement.

Here is a very practical example in my opinion: According to the Clean ABAP Style Guide, messages should not be duplicated by comments. I’ve used comments a lot when working with the MESSAGES statement. I wanted to make it easier for me to read the source code, so I didn’t have to jump into the message class/text. In practice, it quickly happened that a message text was changed and the comments were not. In the style guide there is a note that the message text can be displayed directly in the ADT. In the documentation, however, “Shift + F2” is mentioned. For me “only” the F2 key worked. It looks like this and is very helpful while reading the source code:

F2 key on message number

Even when positioning the cursor on a function module or a method call, a class, a method implementation, a data element, a database table name, it is always worth using the F2 key to quickly get more information. Here are some examples.

F2 on function module call

F2 on method call

F2 on method implementation

The “ABAP Element Info View” is a tab in the toolbar. You can take what you currently see in the “Element Information Popup” into the “ABAP Element Info View” tab and even “freeze” it there with the “Pin this view” function. This makes the comparison of methods much easier. Here’s an example:

F2 and pinned ABAP Element Info to compare

If the function “Link with selection” of the tab is activated, you can navigate in the source text and the element info is displayed depending on the cursor position. You don’t have to use F2 key. Here is an example:

link with selection active

If you want to try this possibilities in the ADT for Eclipse, but are not yet using the ADT, you are welcome to check the “ABAP Development Tools for Eclipse info hub” to get started.

Best regards, thanks for reading and have fun.

Michael