Create OData Entities with the SAP Cloud SDK's Virtual Data Model

Create a file called create-business-partner-address-route.ts in the src folder of your application. Then, copy the following code into it:

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { BusinessPartnerAddress } from '@sap/cloud-sdk-vdm-business-partner-service';

export function createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute(req: Request, res: Response) {
  res.status(200).send(req.params.id);
}

Now open application.ts again, import the function and add the following route definition:

import { businessPartnerRoute } from './business-partner-route';
import { singleBusinessPartnerRoute } from './single-business-partner-route';
import { createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute } from './create-business-partner-address-route';

// ...

private routes(): void {
  const router = express.Router();

  router.get("/", indexRoute);
  router.get("/hello", helloWorld);
  router.get("/business-partners", businessPartnerRoute);
  router.get("/business-partners/:id", singleBusinessPartnerRoute);
  // add the following line
  router.post("/business-partners/:id/address", createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute);
  this.app.use("/", router);
}

Following the best practices for RESTful APIs, we used router.post for this route, so we need to send a POST request. We recommend Postman for testing APIs, but you can also use similar tools or curl.

Restart your server and send a POST request to http://localhost:8080/business-partners/1/address. The server should respond with the ID that you have used in the URL, so in this case with “1”.

Next, we use the VDM to create a new business partner address. Open create-business-partner-address-route.ts and add the following function:

function createBusinessPartnerAddress(address: BusinessPartnerAddress): Promise<BusinessPartnerAddress> {
  return BusinessPartnerAddress.requestBuilder()
    .create(address)
    .execute({
      url: 'https://my.s4hana.ondemand.com/'
    });
}

The create function takes as parameter the entity that should be created. When creating a new entity, the service will automatically generate things like key fields, the creation date, etc. and return it. The VDM makes this available to you by returning a Promise<BusinessPartnerAddress>.

So far, there’s an API endpoint and a function that takes an address and creates it in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. To connect the two, we need a function that constructs a BusinessPartnerAddress object. Add the following function to your code:

function buildAddress(body: any, businessPartnerId: string): BusinessPartnerAddress {
  const address = BusinessPartnerAddress.builder().fromJson(body) as BusinessPartnerAddress;
  address.businessPartner = businessPartnerId;
  return address;
}

This function takes some form of body and a business partner ID. First, using the BusinessPartnerAddress.builder().fromJson(body), you can create a new address from the given body. Note, that this requires the keys of the object passed to the fromJson function to match the respective keys of the business partner address object. We will present a working example later. Second, since we want the address to be related to a given business partner, we need to set the business partner ID on the entity.

With all the building blocks in place, you can connect everything in the createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute function. Your final code should look like this:

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { BusinessPartnerAddress } from '@sap/cloud-sdk-vdm-business-partner-service';

export function createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute(req: Request, res: Response) {
  createBusinessPartnerAddress(buildAddress(req.body, req.params.id))
    .then(bupa => {
      res.status(200).send(bupa);
    })
    .catch(error => {
      res.status(500).send(error.message);
    });
}

function createBusinessPartnerAddress(address: BusinessPartnerAddress): Promise<BusinessPartnerAddress> {
  return BusinessPartnerAddress.requestBuilder()
    .create(address)
    .execute({
      url: 'https://my.s4hana.ondemand.com/'
    });
}

function buildAddress(body: any, businessPartnerId: string): BusinessPartnerAddress {
  const address = BusinessPartnerAddress.builder().fromJson(body) as BusinessPartnerAddress;
  address.businessPartner = businessPartnerId;
  return address;
}

createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute takes the body of the incoming request as well as the ID from the URL and passes it to buildAddress to construct a BusinessPartnerAddress entity. This is then passed to createBusinessPartnerAddress to send the create request to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Restart your server and send a POST request to http://localhost:8080/business-partners/1/address with the following body:

{
	"Country": "DE",
	"PostalCode": "14469",
	"CityName": "Potsdam",
	"StreetName": "Konrad-Zuse-Ring",
	"HouseNumber": "10"
}

If there is a business partner with ID “1” in your destination system, this will create a new address. Alternatively, replace the ID in the URL with the ID of an existing business partner in your system.

The VDM also supports creating an entity together with related entities in a single request. In OData lingo, this is called “deep create”. Consider the following example, where a business partner is created together with one related address:

import { BusinessPartner, BusinessPartnerAddress } from '@sap/cloud-sdk-vdm-business-partner-service';

const businessPartner = BusinessPartner.builder()
  .firstName('John')
  .lastName('Doe')
  .businessPartnerCategory('1')
  .toBusinessPartnerAddress([
    BusinessPartnerAddress.builder()
      .country('DE')
      .postalCode('14469')
      .cityName('Potsdam')
      .streetName('Konrad-Zuse-Ring')
      .houseNumber('10')
      .build()
  ])
  .build();

BusinessPartner.requestBuilder()
  .create(businessPartner)
  .execute({
    url: 'https://my.s4hana.ondemand.com/',
    username: 'USERNAME',
    password: 'PASSWORD'
  });