FEATURE - CLI to enhance Fiori elements for OData v4 projects with the flexible programming model

[tobiasqueck]

As a developer, I want to be able to efficiently add flexible programming model extensions to my Fiori elements for OData v4 application, so that I can focus on the actually functionality instead of integration syntax.

Description

A developer using the flexible programming model is likely to be a technical person that is familiar with (or even fond of) the CLI to generate project artifacts. With this feature we want to empower those developers to efficiently add FPM extensions like custom pages or custom actions to their projects. In addition, the more UI based tools (Fiori tools page modeler and guide development) can also make use of the templates and prompts used by the CLI, so that FPM extensions generated with the CLI or other tools are consistent.

Technical Design

• separate the functionality into three modules
  • templates: containing all templating logic and exposing functions for each available FPM extension e.g. page, section, action etc.
  • prompts: generic definition of prompts that can be used by the CLI but also by UI based tools
  • cli: create a module that can be executed with npm init without the requirement to install anything like yo etc. (https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/commands/npm-init)
• templates and prompts have are to be isolated
• cli will depend on templates and prompts and transform output from prompts to the required input for the template
• other tools should use templates and prompts as needed but should not require the cli module

Acceptance Criteria

Given I am in the root folder of an existing Fiori elements v4 project when I execute npm init @sap-ux/fiori-fpm then I will be able to use a simple CLI based generator adding FPM boilerplate code to my project.

Given I am NOT in the root folder of an existing Fiori elements v4 project when I execute npm init @sap-ux/fiori-fpm then I will be told what I did wrong.

Given I am the developer of tools for Fiori elements when I want to reuse either the templates or the prompts then I will be able to do that without any other unnecessary modules.

Notes

Tasks

• [x] validate with Fiori tools application modeller and guided development experts that the exposed modules are reusable for them
• [x] create initial version of a writer supporting custom page & column for a first integration into application modeller
• [x] extract custom section from Fiori tools in to this module (@815are) PR - #212
• [x] enhance the writer module with the other custom elements supported by the FE FPM
• [ ] revisit the approach used for versioning the templates in the writer module
• [ ] create an inquirer module
• [ ] create cli module using writer and inquirer

[stefanschreck]

Hello Tobias! Pls. be aware of the following:

• Page editor and specification already support extensions - partially. We first focussed on V2, but plan to support the full scope of FPM for V4 in the near future (will be started in the next sprint).
• The specification already provides the necessary templates for new V2 fragments, and will do the same for V4.
• Extensions are rather complicated, as multiple objects (fragment files, manifest settings) with a certain content have to be generated. Thus it does not make sense to have the same logic twice.
• I personally see no advantage of a CLI solution: as an app developer, I want to have some graphical support when it comes to the placement of the extension. Custom sections: CLI still possible, as you define after/before a related section (but you have to know the exact key) Custom column: you need to specify an index number - without having the other columns, this means manual counting.

[tobiasqueck]

Current state:

• custom page, action and column have been released as @sap-ux/fe-fpm-writer
• Fiori tools team is working on replacing the existing custom page implementation with the @sap-ux/fe-fpm-writer
• Fiori tools team is working on adding custom columns using the @sap-ux/fe-fpm-writer

No code duplications and first set of FPM features is transparently implemented in the open-ux-tools repository.