What’s new in the SAP Web IDE Hybrid App Toolkit, 1703

The next release for the SAP Web IDE Hybrid App Toolkit is here.

HAT – as it’s more familiarly known and called – comes up with some substantial features in the 1703 release (version 1.25). And for those who are not familiar with the name HAT, SAP Fiori Developer Experience (DevX) might ring a bell.

For more insight on what HAT is, read Britt’s blog here about SAP Fiori DevX.

These are the two new features released in 1703 which can enhance the developer experience to an all-new level.

1. Build Developer Companion for each packaged project
2. Push Notifications for Fiori Mobile Apps

Build Developer Companion for each hybrid project

Hybrid App Toolkit now supports developers to build project-specific companion app in SAP Web IDE for each hybrid app. Every time you make some changes in the hybrid project, you just need to trigger a reloading in the Developer Companion on the mobile device/simulator/emulator to view the new runtime behavior.

What was there:

In the existing Fiori Mobile app development workflow, every time when an app developer makes changes to the hybrid project in SAP Web IDE, the app developer had to trigger a build to generate the app (.apk/.ipa file), download the app and reinstall to see the new runtime behavior. One instance of such build-download-install cycle can take more than 10 minutes. Even for minimal changes made to the hybrid project, the app developer had to go through this tiring and time-consuming process.

What is offered now:

Developer Companion enables you to skip rebuilding and reinstalling the hybrid app. Unlike a packaged app, you need not deploy a Developer Companion to SAP Cloud Platform or register it to a SAP Fiori Launchpad.

In the Developer Companion, instead of packaging all the app content, Hybrid App Toolkit will embed the project URL in the SAP Web IDE workspace. Every time you make some changes in the hybrid project, you just need to trigger a reloading in the Developer Companion on the mobile device/simulator/emulator. By doing this, you can quickly check the new runtime behavior.

To know how to build a Developer Companion for your Fiori Mobile apps, read the step-by-step process here.

Push Notifications for Fiori Mobile Apps

Push notification allows a Fiori app to receive a short message delivered through Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or Apple Push Notification (APN) services. When the app is running in the background, the message appears as a notification on the device. When clicked on, the Fiori app is opened to process the message, e.g. display as a pop-up. In the past, developers had to switch across different cockpits and portals to figure out how to configure push notifications (particularly, iOS push is tricky). Now you can develop, configure and build an app with push notifications and even deliver a sample test message right from SAP Web IDE.

In a nutshell, these are the steps involved in configuring push notifications for your Fiori Mobile app:

1. Update your hybrid project source code in SAP Web IDE with appropriate Javascript to register for push notifications.
2. Deploy the app to SAP Cloud Platform.
3. Register your app on Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or Apple Push Notification Service (APNS).
4. Test your Push Notifications configuration by sending sample alerts.

To know more about configuring Fiori Mobile apps to receive push notifications, read the elaborate documentation here.

Hopefully you’re interested to know these new features in detail.

We continue to add such features to the developer experience, which will help you to create more and more interesting hybrid apps.

Stay tuned for future updates!