Prepare Your Development Environment for CAP

To earn your badge for the whole mission, you will need to mark all steps in a tutorial as done, including any optional ones that you may have skipped because they are not relevant for you.

This tutorial contains all the installation steps that you would have to do to get started. It’s likely that you have some of the software already installed, so you can just skip those steps.

You can choose the editor to develop your CAP application. If you want to exactly go along with the following tutorials, we recommend using VS Code as an editor.

This tutorial contains a number of command line snippets that need to be pasted into a command line window. All snippets listed for macOS/Linux or without platform information can be executed in the bash or zsh, which are the default shells for these platforms. The Windows snippets are for the Windows Command Line and not for the PowerShell. Windows users are suggested to use the Git BASH instead, which is part of the Git for Windows installation and contains the basic UNIX command line tools. In the Git BASH, use the macOS/Linux snippets of the tutorial. VS Code supports the use of the Git BASH for the integrated command line window (called Terminal in VS Code) as well.

Git is the version control system that you need to download the files of this tutorial but also to develop anything in collaboration with others really.

Check whether you already have Git installed. Open a command line window and execute the following command.

git version

You should get an output like:

git version 2.x.x

If not, go to Git downloads, pick the installer appropriate for your operating system and install it.

Node.js is the JavaScript runtime the CAP backend part of the application runs on and that is needed for some of the tools involved to develop the application.

Make sure you run the latest long-term support (LTS) version of Node.js with an even number like 16. Refrain from using odd versions, for which some modules with native parts will have no support and thus might even fail to install.

If you don’t have the required version, go to Node.js download page, pick the installer appropriate for your operating system, and install it. In case of problems, see the Troubleshooting guide for CAP for more details.

In case you don’t know whether you have Node.js installed and whether it has the right version (^16), open a command line window and execute the following command:

node -v

You should get an output like:

v16.x.x

1. Check in a command line window whether you already have the UI5 CLI installed.

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   ui5 --version
   

2. If you don’t get a version number, install the UI5 CLI.

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   npm install --global @ui5/cli
   

3. Verify that the installation was successful by running the version command again.

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   ui5 --version
   

See SAPUI5 CLI for more details.

CAP provides you with all the tools to create your data model with entities and your services. It helps you tremendously to get these services running locally during development with an incredible speed. It also creates the connection to both local databases and databases in the cloud (SAP HANA). It comes with different tooling that is used in this tutorial. You can see the details in the CAP documentation.

1. Install CDS development kit globally in a command line window.

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   npm install --global @sap/cds-dk
   

   This process takes some minutes installing the cds command that you will use in the next steps. On macOS/Linux, you need to follow the steps as described here.

   If there’s an older @sap/cds package already installed on your machine, you have to remove it first. You’ll be instructed to do so. If you run into problems, see the Troubleshooting guide in the CAP documentation for more details.

2. To verify that the installation was successful, run cds without arguments.

   This lists the available cds commands.

3. Check what versions of the CDS libraries have been installed.

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   cds --version
   

   To know what is the latest version of the CAP tooling, see the Release Notes for CAP.

You need to install the SAP Language Support extensions for VS Code:

1. Open VS Code.

2. Choose the Extensions icon in the left pane.

3. Type SAP CDS in the search field and choose SAP CDS Language Support from the search results.

   

4. Choose Install.

5. Restart VS Code after the installation.

Now, the extension is installed in VS Code. If the extension is already installed and enabled in VS Code, it is updated automatically. The VS Code extension comes with a welcome page, which shows latest release notes of CAP. It starts automatically whenever an update arrives for the extension. Later, you can open the page through the Command Palette in VS Code CDS: Show CAP Release Notes.

Learn more about SAP CDS Language Support Extension:

• short demo
• features and commands

SAP Fiori tools are a number of extensions for VS Code. They mainly support you in developing SAP Fiori elements apps. In this tutorial, you use the so-called SAP Fiori application generator to create an SAP Fiori elements app, you need this for the tutorial Create an SAP Fiori Elements-Based UI.

Additional Documentation:

SAP Fiori Tools

For macOS you need to install the code command in PATH as described in the previous step on how to Install VS Code.

You need to install the SAP Fiori tools - Extension Pack extensions for VS Code:

1. Open VS Code.

2. Choose the Extensions icon in the left pane.

3. Type SAP Fiori tools in the search field and choose SAP Fiori tools - Extension Pack from the search results.

   

4. Choose Install.

5. Restart VS Code after the installation.

After a restart of VS Code, you can check for the tools by invoking View → Extensions and then scrolling through the list of Enabled extensions. They all start with SAP Fiori tools. If the extension is already installed and enabled in VS Code, it’s updated automatically.

Yeoman is a tool for scaffolding web apps. You’ll need it if you want to carry out the tutorial Add the SAP Launchpad Service.

1. Check in a terminal whether you already have Yeoman installed:

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   yo --version
   

2. If you don’t get a version number, install Yeoman:

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   npm install --global yo
   

If a tutorial has prerequisites, they’re listed at the beginning of the tutorial.

For the tutorial, you need a directory to develop the app and you need access to the template files. We recommend choosing one root directory (that is the tutorial root directory) for both the directory for your app (cpapp) and the tutorial directory (tutorial) with the template files. See the table below:

Downloading the tutorial gives you easy access to template files that are required for some tutorials.

1. Open a command line window.

2. Navigate to the previously decided tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

3. Clone the tutorial.

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   git clone https://github.com/SAP-samples/cloud-cap-risk-management tutorial
   

To be able to perform the steps for CI/CD, you will need a public repository. Currently, SAP Continuous Integration and Delivery supports GitHub and Bitbucket repositories.

We recommend creating a public GitHub repository to save your tutorial application because this is what the tutorial uses. This way, if you have issues with your tutorial application, you can refer to it.

For real application development, you need to consider the right place for your repository, of course.

Go to GitHub and create a new GitHub repository.

Info about branches

For the sake of simplicity, don’t create additional branches in your repository. When initially created, your repository has only one branch - the main branch. This is the only branch you need to complete the tutorial.

1. Copy the repository’s URL you have created before.

2. Open a command line window.

3. Navigate to the tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

4. Clone your new repository.

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   git clone <git-repository-url> cpapp
   

   Replace <git-repository-url> with your GitHub repository’s URL.

To earn your badge for the whole mission, you will need to mark all steps in a tutorial as done, including any optional ones that you may have skipped because they are not relevant for you.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, but from a specific example of the tutorial, you can copy the required files in your project. Alternatively, you can fork the project and work on the fork.

The name of the prerequisite branch is given on the top of each tutorial that requires code changes.

1. Look-up the branch in the tutorial.

2. Open a command line window.

3. Navigate to the tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

4. Check out the example’s branch.

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   cd tutorial
   git checkout <branch>
   

   Replace <branch> with the name of the branch of the example that you want to start with.

5. Copy all files from the example to a local directory <project-dir>, except the .git directory.

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   cp -r .gitignore $(ls -1A | grep -v .git) ../cpapp
   

   If you get an error, make sure you are not using PowerShell to execute the command. Checkout Step 2: Command Line Interpreters above to see the recommended command line interpreters for this tutorial.

6. Check out the master branch to get access to the template files again.

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   git checkout master
   

7. Switch to your app directory.

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   cd ../cpapp
   

8. Install required Node.js modules in your app directory.

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   npm install