NetWeaver and API's

[craigcmehil]

My My latest rant on developing with SAP was a bit of a rant about a rant, now I want to take you a step closer to the some of the cool things you can do with the NetWeaver Platform.

I've done quite a bit work personally with 3 services out there and I've connected each of them to NetWeaver at some point or another.

• Twitter
• Dopplr
• Zoho

Many of course will not "get" why one would do this or for what advantages might be gained but I'm sure you will. The idea is simple, services exist that your customers might use so why not be able to give them the best of both worlds what they have been using together with the power of their SAP NetWeaver platform and the vast amounts of data that they have contained within.

Imagine travel planning linked to Dopplr, or work logs linked to Twitter or the ability to share data with suppliers via Zoho without the need to export, import and merge changes.

To get you started and for you see how easy it is to connect - have a look,

DATA: URL TYPE STRING,        ERRORTEXT TYPE STRING.  data HTTP_CLIENT type ref to IF_HTTP_CLIENT .  data RETURN_CODE type I .  data P_USER type STRING value 'username' .  data P_PASSWD type STRING value 'password' .  CALL METHOD CL_HTTP_CLIENT=>CREATE_BY_URL    EXPORTING      URL               = URL    IMPORTING      CLIENT             = HTTP_CLIENT    EXCEPTIONS      ARGUMENT_NOT_FOUND = 1      INTERNAL_ERROR     = 2      PLUGIN_NOT_ACTIVE  = 3      OTHERS             = 4.* proxy server authentication  TRANSLATE P_USER TO LOWER CASE.  TRANSLATE P_PASSWD TO LOWER CASE.  CALL METHOD HTTP_CLIENT->AUTHENTICATE    EXPORTING      USERNAME = P_USER      PASSWORD = P_PASSWD.  HTTP_CLIENT->SEND( ).  HTTP_CLIENT->RECEIVE( ).  HTTP_CLIENT->RESPONSE->GET_STATUS( IMPORTING CODE = RETURN_CODE ).  CONTENT = HTTP_CLIENT->RESPONSE->GET_CDATA( ).  HTTP_CLIENT->CLOSE( ).  IF RETURN_CODE <> 200.    WRITE:/ 'Error retrieving document'.    EXIT.  ENDIF.

That's just the start. Twitter is one I presented this year at TechEd and yo can see it live in action here.