Integrating an external API into an SAP Cloud Application Programming Model service

Continuing on from last week's back to basics episode, we look at how we can integrate an external API (the API_BUSINESS_PARTNER API we found on SAP API Business Hub) into an SAP Cloud Application Programming Model service. Join us, everyone welcome, especially beginners!

Topics:
cap, cds, OData, metadata, EDMX, mocking, jq, ijq, SAP Cloud SDK

Links:
SAP API Business Hub: https://api.sap.com
SAP CDS Language Support extension for VS Code: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/...

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome and introduction
06:00 Remembering what we did last week, starting at the API_BUSINESS_PARTNER API
11:00 Looking through the log output at the CAP server startup activities
12:00 Re-running the cds import process to see what appears in the srv/ dir and in package.json
13:50 Comparing cds run and cds watch
16:00 Re-creating the CSV data for the A_BusinessPartner entity
21:10 Thinking about what we need to connect to the sandbox system
23:45 Parsing the YouTube Data API output to get a list of video IDs and titles with jq
26:22 Using the power of the SAP CDS Language Support extension plus the Language Server Protocol (LSP)
28:40 Creating a basic projection on an entity from the external API
31:00 Creating CSV data from the YouTube playlist item JSON for the Episodes entity
34:10 Trying out mocking of the external service in a separate process (with cds mock)
35:10 Exploring the `~/.cds-services.json` file used for tight local development lifecycles
41:40 Adding the sandbox URL to package.json as the simplest thing that will possibly work
43:50 Introducing the concept of CAP configuration profiles
45:50 Looking at what happens when a remote service isn't mocked
47:40 Discovering where the @cds.persistence.skip annotation comes from, and why
52:03 Exploring the question about reverse proxying by adding an association and thinking about how that will be resolved (with the help of the SAP Cloud SDK, used internally by CAP)
55:45 Taking a first brief look at CAP's env facility, the cds env command, and the .env file
58:00 Rushing to get a profile in to the environment (and missing the fact that I omitted the `cds` prefix to all properties in the .env file!)