ui5-cap-event-app

Showcase of two UI5 user interfaces, one built with freestyle SAPUI5 (or rather OpenUI5), the other using SAP Fiori elements, with a CAP backend, using OData V4 with Draft mode.

Description

This app uses simple attendee registration and administration for events as an example scenario for demonstrating the data handling and overall setup. The app consists of three parts: an end-user UI implemented in freestyle SAPUI5, a metadata-driven administrator UI generated with Fiori elements and a Node.js-based CAP backend.
While the code implements a complete end-to-end full-stack app, it is kept as simple as possible and the main focus is on freestyle SAPUI5 code making use of OData V4 as well as of “Draft” functionality to persist non-final datasets.

Further details about how the functionality is implemented can be found in the documentation.

Requirements

Node.js (latest LTS version which supports npm workspaces)
@sap/cds-dk">SAP CAP CLI (do npm install -g @sap/cds-dk)
sqlite3 (only needed separately on Windows, commandline tools zip need to be downloaded, extracted, and directory added to the PATH)

Download and Installation

Clone the project.

 git clone https://github.com/SAP-samples/ui5-cap-event-app
 cd ui5-cap-event-app

Use npm to install the dependencies.
```
 npm i
```

Running the Project

Execute the following command to run the project locally for development (start the CDS server running the admin UI and form UI embedded):

npm start

As also shown in the terminal after executing this command, the CDS server is running on http://localhost:4004/.

For the form UI, you can use user name employee@test.com with password 123. For the admin UI, use admin@test.com and password 123.

Building the Project

Execute the following command to build the project and get one integrated app that can be deployed (build the form UI, admin UI, and CDS server):

npm run build

Prerequisite: npm run build runs cds build in the CDS server package which requires @sap/cds-dk. Please ensure to install @sap/cds-dk globally via:

npm i -g @sap/cds-dk

After building the individual packages, the build results will be copied to the central dist folder. The resulting package inside the dist folder consists of the CDS server hosting the form UI and the admin UI as well as a sandbox Fiori launchpad to start the individual UIs.

To start the generated package, just run npm install and npm start inside the dist folder. This installs the dependencies and starts the CDS server hosting the UIs. Now the sandbox Fiori launchpad can be opened on http://localhost:4004/.

Debugging the Project

We have prepared two ways of debugging the Node.js part of the app easily:

Debugging with VSCode

The launch configuration “debug server in vscode” is part of the project and can be used to run the CAP server in debug mode and debug directly in VSCode (e.g. set breakpoints).

Note: the UI parts are not started by this launch configuration. To debug the interaction of server and UI, the form UI or admin UI has to be started separately with npm run start:ui-form or npm run start:ui-admin.

Limitations

The local database uses in-memory mode. Data will be re-initialized after each restart.

The sample does not cover deployment of the app, where additional considerations e.g. regarding database and authentication are needed.

How to obtain support

The sample code is provided as-is. No support is provided.

References

Other projects demonstrating similar use-cases:

https://github.com/vobu/ui5-cap - a repository showcasing the use of UI5 Tooling, CAP + UIveri5-based testing in an app for media upload and preview (as presented at UI5conBE in Feb 2020) by Volker Buzek.
https://blogs.sap.com/2020/07/08/ui5-freestyle-app-in-cap - a UI5 freestyle app in CAP, with approuter, by Wouter Lemaire.
https://blogs.sap.com/2020/09/06/developing-a-fiori-elements-app-with-cap-and-fiori-tools/ - about developing a Fiori elements app with CAP and Fiori Tools
https://blogs.sap.com/2020/04/07/ui5-tooling-a-modern-development-experience-for-ui5/ - an overview on the UI5 Tooling and its extensions for a modern development experience.