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

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

Dennis Hempfing

2019-11-04

Intermediate
20 min.
SAP Cloud SDK, Intermediate, SAP Cloud Platform, Tutorial, JavaScript, OData
Create OData entities with the SAP Cloud SDK's virtual data model to build an address manager application.

You will learn

  • How to use the Virtual Data Model to create a new entity
  • How to trigger a create request from an API endpoint exposed by your application

The goal of this tutorial group is to show you how to implement a JavaScript application that allows you to manage the addresses of business partners. This application will be using Express.js and the SAP Cloud SDK for JavaScript. In this tutorial, we use the SAP Cloud SDK’s OData Virtual Data Model to create a new address and make this functionality available via an API endpoint.

Step 1: Add an API endpoint
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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);
}

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

const { BusinessPartnerAddress } = require('@sap/cloud-sdk-vdm-business-partner-service');

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

module.exports.createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute = createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute;

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

const { businessPartnerRoute } = require('./business-partner-route');
const { singleBusinessPartnerRoute } = require('./single-business-partner-route');
const { createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute } = require('./create-business-partner-address-route');

// ...

private routes() {
  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.

Example POST request using Postman

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”.

Done
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Step 2: Create a business partner address
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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/'
    });
}

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

function createBusinessPartnerAddress(address) {
  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>.

Done
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Step 3: Build a business partner address from the request
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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;
}

function buildAddress(body, businessPartnerId) {
  const address = BusinessPartnerAddress.builder().fromJson(body);
  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.

Done
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Step 4: Wire everything up
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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;
}

const { BusinessPartnerAddress } = require('@sap/cloud-sdk-vdm-business-partner-service');

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

module.exports.createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute = createBusinessPartnerAddressRoute;

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

function buildAddress(body, businessPartnerId) {
  const address = BusinessPartnerAddress.builder().fromJson(body);
  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.

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Step 5: Optional: Deep create
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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'
  });

const { BusinessPartner, BusinessPartnerAddress } = require('@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'
  });
Done
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Step 6: Test yourself
Write the minimum necessary code to create a new Business Partner Address (assuming a variable 'address' of type 'BusinessPartnerAddress') using system 'https://my.cloud.erp.com' (assuming no authentication is necessary).
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