Skip to Content
Product Information
Author's profile photo Peter Spielvogel

Video series on flexible programming model for SAP Fiori elements

The flexible programming model allows you to create or extend SAP Fiori elements apps with custom code and custom controller logic. It gives developers more flexibility when building SAP Fiori elements applications as they no longer need to decide up front whether to use a floorplan or create a freestyle app. With the flexible programming model, your custom apps gain the benefits of SAP Fiori elements (developer productivity and UX consistency) with added flexibility to meet your needs.

Although we have documentation in the flexible programming model explorer, we wanted to provide additional information so you can understand how the flexible programming model works and the best ways to use it when building SAP Fiori elements applications. To do this, we have asked two of our architects, Marcel Wächter and Nicolas Lunet, to explain the flexible programming model in a video series.

In five short episodes, they answer these questions and much more.

  • What is the flexible programming model?
  • What are building blocks?
  • How do you build freestyle apps with SAP Fiori elements?

The%20flexible%20programming%20model%20video%20series%20explains%20how%20to%20use%20the%20flexible%20programming%20model%20in%20your%20SAP%20Fiori%20elements%20apps.

The flexible programming model video series explains how to use the flexible programming model in your SAP Fiori elements apps.

Here’s a short episode guide:

We are starting to use the flexible programming model and SAP Fiori elements for OData V4 to build apps for SAP S/4HANA, public edition, private edition, and on-prem. There are several advantages of using the flexible programming model.

  • It lowers your maintenance effort and increases the lifecycle stability of apps by reducing the amount of custom SAPUI5 coding you need when building apps that don’t follow the standard SAP Fiori elements floorplans.
  • It boosts developer efficiency by letting you leverage standard SAP Fiori elements functionality, such as draft handling or side effects, in custom sections or custom apps.
  • It helps you enforce UX consistency in the custom parts of your applications.

To get the most value from this video series, I recommend you have several windows open, which will either require a very large monitor or multiple monitors: the video series for reference, the flexible programming model explorer, another browser window to download the code samples (links are listed with each video), and your development environment to try things out as Nicolas and Marcel explain them.

Watch the series and let us know in the comments if you have additional questions. Also, please share your success stories on how you are using the flexible programming model to build new SAP Fiori elements apps.

On behalf of the SAP Fiori elements product team, Peter Spielvogel.

Assigned Tags

      11 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Cristiano Marques
      Cristiano Marques

      Great content Peter Spielvogel . Is there a plan to make this flexible programming model available for odata v2?

      And with this flexible model, does SAPUI5 freestyle remain an alternative to use?

      Author's profile photo Peter Spielvogel
      Peter Spielvogel
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Christiano,

      Flexible programming model is only for SAP Fiori elements for OData V4. If you are building a new app, we recommend this approach.

      SAPUI5 freestyle remains an option. The flexible programming model gives you the advantages of the SAP Fiori elements framework with the ability to use whatever custom coding you want.

      Our expert paper has more details.

      https://www.sap.com/documents/2021/05/fce40d55-e37d-0010-bca6-c68f7e60039b.html

      Regards,
      Peter

      Author's profile photo Cristiano Marques
      Cristiano Marques

      Hi Peter! Last week  I perceived that freestyle templates in BAS was moved to 'deprecated templates'. And there has a comment suggesting to use 'Custom page', that is based in flexible programming model. My question is: does the SAPUI5 freestyle still remains an option in 2023? I searched for blog posts explaining this deprecation, but I have not found this info. Why these templates are deprecated? Should we focus in create OData V4 apps?

      Author's profile photo Peter Spielvogel
      Peter Spielvogel
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Cristiano,

      SAPUI5 freestyle remains an option. We have renamed this to "Basic Page" in the SAP Fiori tools application generator, but in the text you will see it is to generate a freestyle application. All apps listed are SAPUI5 apps, so we do not explicitly list that for each app type.

      We recommend using OData V4 if possible.

      Regards,
      Peter

      Author's profile photo Cristiano Marques
      Cristiano Marques

      Now I got it! The freestyle template is deprecated but freestyle coding remains an option using Custom page. I have started my playing with flexible programming model and I can see the possibilites!

      Author's profile photo Dinu Pavithran
      Dinu Pavithran

      Dear Peter,

      The branch for the sample code  linked from the videos have since been deleted. Can we have this back? It would be great supplement to the videos.

      Regards,

      Dinu

      Author's profile photo Peter Spielvogel
      Peter Spielvogel
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dinu,

      Sorry for the inconvenience. Does this link work for you?

      https://github.com/SAP-samples/fiori-elements-v4-cap-advanced

      Regards,

      Peter

      Author's profile photo Dinu Pavithran
      Dinu Pavithran

      Dear Peter,

      The repository is accessible. But the specific code snippets from the videos are not present in any of the branches or I was not able to find the right branch which has these snippets. For example the folder '/app/travel_processor/webapp/ext/view' or '/app/shopping_cart' are not present in the repository.

      Regards,

      Dinu

      Author's profile photo Masahiko Murata
      Masahiko Murata

      Dear Peter

      As Dinu says, I can't even find the code presented in the video in the repository.
      Could you please re-release the sources such as manifest.json, view.xml and controller.js?

      Regards,

      Masa

      Author's profile photo Peter Spielvogel
      Peter Spielvogel
      Blog Post Author

      We have restored the sample code.

      Regards,
      Peter

      Author's profile photo Masahiko Murata
      Masahiko Murata

      Dear Peter,

      I really appreciate what you've done.

      Regards,
      Masa