sap.ui.table in Single mode does not show checkboxes

[Former Member]

I experience an issue that has been discussed long ago and seemed to be solved back then, but may have been reappeared now (see https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/3834544):

If I set selectionMode="Single" on a sap.ui.table, the header cells in each row do not show checkboxes. They simply stay empty. The JSBIN in the old question above clearly shows the problem, both in current Chrome and Firefox: http://jsbin.com/gobogihezu/1/edit?html,output
SAPUI5 version as of this writing is: 1.52.10.

According to my analysis this is due to missing CSS code, when table's selectionMode is set to Single.
Adding this additional CSS code solved the problem for me, by forcing the missing CSS back:
.sapUiTableRowHdr:not(.sapUiTableRowHidden)::before { display: block; } .sapUiTableRowHdr.sapUiTableRowSel::before { content: '\e05b'; }

[SergioG_TX]

since the treeTable extends the sap.ui.table, its documentation https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/api/sap.ui.table.Table/controlProperties shows that due to the selectionMode influences the visual appearance. This seems to be normal behavior when you have Single selection mode. Logically it make sense to not show checkboxes since you do not need to be doing "Multi" selection (different selection mode)

[Former Member]

I agree that checkboxes are implying a multi-select. But the empty cells are also not a viable solution: They are completely unintuitive. A user will hardly understand that s/he must click the empty row head to select a row. The logical solution would be radio-button symbols to indicate a single select situation.
From the history of thread https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/3834544 it seems that checkboxes were used in the past for single select too. They work perfectly well for that. At least they are a better solution than no symbol at all.