The SAP BTP SDK for iOS Version 6.1 update

Since end of March 2021, the SAP BTP SDK for iOS the new version 6.0 got released by the SDK team. In the last couple of months, since the March release new features got implemented by the SDK team which are available in the SAP BTP SDK for iOS Version 6.1. In this blog post I want to talk about some major changes in the 6.1 release as well as the update of the Tutorial Missions on the SAP Developer Center.

Release 6.1

With the release of 6.0 back in March some major changes came into place for the SAP BTP SDK for iOS. Not only got the SDK renamed from SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS to SAP BTP SDK for iOS but also new features got introduced in the areas of Authentication, Crash Reporting, App Extensions, SAP BTP SDK for iOS Assistant, SAPOfflineOData Framework, SAPFiori and SAPML.

To me especially interesting are the following new features:

Authentication

• API Key Only authentication for anonymous access on Cloud Foundry through mobile apps
• iOS Assistant generates the needed code for the authentication flow

Crash Reporting

• We got Crash Reporting capabilities which can help support and analyse crash issues of your app. These reports can be uploaded to SAP Mobile Services for deeper crash analysis.

App Extensions

• With the release of App Extensions by Apple, SAP worked on enhancing the SAP BTP SDK for iOS Assistant generated apps to allow implementing App Extensions to fully support that platform feature.
• Apps generated with the iOS Assistant have now the necessary code generated to easily extend your app with Apple’s App Extensions.

SAP BTP SDK for iOS Assistant

• The iOS Assistant got new features like the support for predefined destinations during app creation on Cloud Foundry.
• The Sample OData service – OData Enterprise Sales and Procurement Model service is now available through OData V2 and V4.
• The generated App code is now seperated into individual components/frameworks to make it more easy to add or remove individual components e.g. the proxy classes. This makes the generated app projects more modular which is helpful when it comes to reusing code between app and the app extensions like the app widgets.

SAPOfflineOData Framework

• Major change is the support for offline OData in combination with OData V4.

SAPFiori Framework

New UI components:

• • Signature Form: modal view for collecting a user’s signature
  • What’s New Pattern: Special control for displaying updates or news to the user
  • Also, new chart types and segmented control

SAPML Framework

• Use of Apple’s Vision framework for text recognition.

Project Example for generated App

For further information read the official release notes

Changes to the Tutorial Missions and Sample Repo

The above mentioned changes, especially the way the iOS Assistant generates the app projects made it necessary to update tutorials and tutorial missions on the SAP Developer Center.

I’ve made major reworks for the two available tutorial missions for the SAP BTP SDK for iOS. These changes involve the usage of the new project structure as well as the usage of the OData Proxy classes as well as the generated data service layer.

The tutorial missions are:

• Build an iOS and MacOS App with One Code Line Using SAP BTP SDK for iOS
• Implement an Image Classification App for Identifying Product Categories

Also with the update of the above mentioned tutorial missions I have updated the SAP Sample repository which is in companion for the Build an iOS and MacOS App with One Code Line tutorial mission. You can find the newly updated sample code on GitHub.

• https://github.com/SAP-samples/cloud-sdk-ios-maccatalyst-mission-project

In the next couple of days there will also be an update to the UIKit based Advocates App within the Advocates Service End2End example on GitHub, stay tuned for that.

I would encourage you to check the new content out and give these great feature improvements and changes a try. Familiarize yourself with the newly way of code generation by the iOS Assistant as it may impact your future development of next-gen business apps on the iOS platform.

For me these changes are really welcome and make our life as iOS developers much easier when it comes to business apps connecting to SAP BTP.

With that, Keep Coding!