Product Information
Moving to Multi-Channel with Mobile Development Kit
Updated 28 November 2021: Latest changes
In today’s digital world, user experience is a multi-experience journey spanning across multi-channels, multi-touchpoints and multi-modal interactions. Our customers have been asking for a solution to maintain a single code base that provides both a mobile experience for their field colleagues, as they are most of time in fields with limited or no connectivity and a web experience for their back office colleagues as they work most of the time on desktops. I am happy to announce the MDK Web Runtime, which expands MDK capabilities to desktop complementing existing MDK Mobile Clients (Android & iOS). You can now build and maintain a single app that runs natively on Mobile (Android & iOS) and web app (online) in browser. MDK Web Runtime is an important delivery of the SAP Extension Suite and offers new Low-Code features which helps business developers to contribute in building extensions.
MDK Web Runtime:
- is Intended for desktop consumption (major browsers supported)
- is an HTML based application running in a browser using UI5 Web Components that consumes SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) destinations to access the backend sources
- supports Online OData connections (v2 & v4)
- uses same metadata as the Mobile (Android & iOS)
- can now use Platform function $(PLT,<ios>,<android>,<web>)
-
is available in trial (CF) and as well as productive accounts (CF & Neo).
Architecture:
- For design time,
- we have enhanced the MDK editor capability in SAP Business Application Studio to create the metadata project connecting to data sources from Mobile Services (for mobile apps) or Cloud Platform destinations (for web apps).
- To deploy the metadata on Mobile & Web, you need to select target runtime as Mobile Services & Cloud Foundry respectively. (You also have capability to deploy it to both targets in a single click). For web, MDK metadata project will be deployed as HTML app into SAP BTP HTML5 Repository .
- At run time,
- for Mobile: it is same as we have it today. To access the app, end user will use the MDK Mobile client.
- for Web: end user will login to the deployed web application and after successful login, will see first page of the application. The MDK Web app connects to backend sources via Cloud platform destinations. MDK Web runtime is centrally managed by SAP.
Use Cases:
- Multi-channel: maintain a single app that runs natively on Mobile (Android & iOS) and web app (online) in browser
- Launch the application from SAP Fiori Launchpad or SAP Work Zone
Launch a MDK web application from SAP Fiori Launchpad
Launch a MDK web application from SAP Work Zone
How does MDK Web application work?
As mentioned in the architecture section, MDK web app connects to backend sources via Cloud platform destination. You need to:
- Create a destination in SAP BTP cockpit > subaccount > Connectivity > Destinations
- In Editor: while creating a new project you need to select OData Source > Cloud Foundry to select the destination created in SAP BTP cockpit
- The generated project will have an additional folder Web which contains
- App_Resources folder: You can put in web specific app resource files, which will be consumed by your web application using the res:// protocol in the metadata definition, e.g. images, documents and more.
- config.json: file where you can configure web specific settings for your web application e.g., default application language code, Application display name etc.
- To deploy the project, right-click Application.app > MDK: Deploy and choose the Cloud Foundry target.
MDK metadata will get deployed into the HTML application repository on SAP BTP. Once app is deployed, developer is informed to open the app in a new tab. You can also find the published web app URL in .project.json file.
Note: Similar functionality is available in SAP Web IDE
Current Limitations:
How will I reuse my existing Mobile project and run it in both Mobile & Web?
- Keeping the above limitations in mind, you can run your existing metadata project in both Mobile & Web.
- You need to first create a BTP destination pointing to same data source as your Mobile app is pointing to. You can maintain the same destination name on both BTP and Mobile Services.
- If current app is
- only for online use case : you can directly deploy it to both the targets Mobile (to run it as mobile app) & Cloud (to run it as a web app).
- for offline use case: this is applicable only if you have the OData initialization action of type OfflineOData.Initialize in your current metadata project.
you need to create a new OData Initialize action, add defining queries (similar to what you already have it in ODataOffline Initialize action). Then update OnLaunch, onDidUpdate events in app file binding to new action and you can then deploy to both the targets.
OfflineEnabled set to true in service file and DefiningRequests in ODataService.Initialize action will be ignored in case of Web as web is always online only.
Further Information:
You can learn more in documentation :
- Create MDK web application in SAP Business Application Studio (Cloud Foundry)
- Create MDK Web application in SAP Web IDE Full-Stack
- MDK Web Runtime Limitations
- UI5 Web Components
I am looking forward to your feedback and comments.
Jitendra
Nice, i'm looking forward to try out this! Is the offline support in the roadmap?
Thanks
Aurélien
aurelien albert
It's under consideration in future.
Nice. Looks like this will slowly phase out the Hybrid Apps approach we are used to earlier.
Hi Jitendra,
MDK Web Client, can this be used to replace the custom Fiori Client build capability in Neo?
For customers invested om Custom Fiori Client in Neo when they migrate to CF there is a gap, can MDK Web Client cover this gap to possibly build a Web Client for Fiori Launchpad?
Rajesh
SAP Australia
The blog post mentions:
Does it mean, the generated web app can be opened within the FLP just like a UI5 app? Or will it open in a new tab / separate window? What are the current known limitations regarding integration with the FLP? Does it, for example, support SAP Enable Now?
Boghyon Hoffmann
Does it mean, the generated web app can be opened within the FLP just like a UI5 app?>> Yes, for this, you need to go to FLP cockpit to create a new tile and provide your MDK web application URL.
Or will it open in a new tab / separate window?>>Depends how you have configured it, supports both way. I have added a gif above on how to open MDK Web application from FLP.
If you have any further queries, please post a new thread.
Thank you for the update. Is it also possible to review my changes in an MDK project ...
I haven't found any other solutions so far. I could see my changes only after deploying the app to the target environments. Or is it possible to only build the app (without deploying) and running it in an FLP sandbox to see the changes?
Boghyon Hoffmann
We recently introduced local deployment where you can deploy your MDK app to your dev space and test it locally without deploying to the BTP.
https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/27/whats-new-in-mobile-development-kit-client-5.2/#LocalDevSpace
However, to launch the MDK app from the FLP, you first need to deploy it to BTP.
Since v6.0, MDK web apps can be previewed without having to deploy every time: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/09/04/whats-new-in-mobile-development-kit-client-6.0/#Preview
Hi Jitendra,
thanks for this nice feature. I getting problems with mobil destinations on Neo.
Failed to initialize application data service - Error: 404 (); GET
/*/sap/opu/odata/sap/...SRV/
and have to change the user but logout function is not working
thx. and greeting
robert
Robert Hunger
To understand your issue, are you getting that error in MDK web client app? Could you post a new question with some additional details:
Hello Jitendra,
This blog is very Informative and helpful for those who starts working on the Mobile Services Application.
I am not getting the web Folder after creating the project in BAS while selecting the OData Source>Cloud Foundry.
Can you please let me know how to get it.
Thanks
Mamatha
Mamatha Majji
Currently, the Web folder is generated once you deploy project to Cloud.
We'll improve our template to generate this folder on project creation, this is planned in our future release.
Regards,
Jitendra
Hi Jitendra,
I am working on Unity as a library approach. Does MDK works with Unity as well or have some limitations / drawbacks.
Kind Regards,
Puneet
Could you post a new question with some additional details on the requirements to understand what exactly you are doing?
Dear Jitendra, I'm glad to come across this blog, because I did not know the way to thank you for your absolutely brilliant tutorial series "Create Your First MDK Application" (https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/cp-mobile-dev-kit-list-page.html). I'm totally hooked on it now and want to learn more about SAP Mobile Services! Is there any chance/what is the best way to ask you a question on one of the steps in this tutorial? Regards Nadya
Many thanks! I will try and open a question in SAP Community:) Wish you a nice week-end! Regards Nadya
Dear Jitendra, I just wanted to let you know that I've managed to compete the tutorial. No questions at the moment:) The problem was that my app did not sync with my iOS, did not get updates etc. I found an error in my JS validation rule code, corrected it and now everything works perfectly. I love it and thank you again!
Interested to know if anyone has deployed SAP Asset Manager (SAM) as an MDK Web application? Is that possible with the offline sync process?
Hello Jitendra,
it is possible to use an OData Service "ABC" for offline capabilities (ABC#1.service) and the same OData Service for only online capabilities (ABC#2.service) in the same application? I had configure the scenario, but only the offline store is created based on the defining requests (ABC#1.service). But there are no online requests when opening for example a page with a list binded to an entity of the OData Service (ABC#2.service).
Thank you.
Thomas Schilling
Technically yes.
You need to first create an OData Initialize action (enable offline store - false) for ABC#2.service and have to call this action in the app.
One option is - you can call this 2nd OData Init action on onSuccess event of the Initialize action (for ABC#1.service).
Please note that you need to handle the local changes done with ABC#1.service when you expect changes to be reflected in the pages bound to an entity of the OData service (ABC#2.service)
Hello Jitendra,
thank your for your hint. Now it works!
Hello Jitendra,
Thankyou some much for this blog .
My observation on the user access to these applications is that the user needs to scan the QR code (and then also setup a password for the app) in order to access it in SAP mobile services client. How can we provide access to multiple mdk apps to the user at the same time without the need for them to log out and scan a new QR code for a new application. Am I missing to see something here ?
Santosh Naidu
SAP mobile services client (i assume you are talking about the app store client) is a generic client provided by SAP which can mainly be used for development/testing purposes.
One MDK metadata/app definition is for one MDK client (1:1). You can build your own branded clients using MDK SDK , Cloud Build service and install it on your devices and can run different apps. While creating a branded client, you can provide your app connection settings in BrandedSettings.json file (in .mdkproject) so when user launches the client, they don't need to scan an on-boarding QR code and connect to server directly as connection settings are already part of the branded client.They would need to set the passcode/biometric if it is enabled in the mobile services app settings exchange.