SAPUI5 is organized into several libraries. In this post, we’ll take a look at them.
The most important is the sap.ui.core library, hereafter called the core. Without the core, SAPUI5 can’t run at all. In this library, you’ll find all the basic functionality, including model, view, and controller base classes, control classes, routing and navigation, and more.
Bootstrapping is the process of loading and initializing SAPUI5. The path to the core library needs to point to the bootstrap of an SAPUI5 application, and it’s crucial to the application.
The core itself doesn’t have any controls; they live in the other libraries. You need to pick the libraries you want to load, depending on the use case of your application.
Imagine you want to build an SAP Fiori-like application running across different devices and browsers. You’ll most likely choose to load the sap.m library, which has the most important cross-browser-compatible controls. You may also want to load the sap.ui.layout library, as it contains controls that help you structure and display the content of your views.
The table below lists the key libraries that are part of SAPUI5 and what they are designed for.
2
A few libraries have limited compatibility. For example, it’s not recommended to mix controls from sap.ui.commons and sap.ui.ux3 or to mix sap.ui.richtexteditor with controls from sap.m.
The figure below illustrates the key libraries and their compatibilities with each other.
The libraries in the intersection of the two circles can be used together with libraries from the left circle and with libraries from the right one. However, libraries from the left and the right sides should not be combined together in one project; these combinations aren’t tested and not supported.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAPUI5: The Comprehensive Guide by Paul Modderman, Christiane Goebels, Denise Nepraunig, and Thilo Seidel.