Getting Started

Your First Steps

Welcome to CAP, and to capire, its one-stop documentation.

CAP [ˈkap(m)] — (unofficial) abbreviation for the "SAP Cloud Application Programming Model"

capire [ca·pì·re] — Italian for "understand"

Initial Setup

Follow the steps after this for a minimalistic local setup. Alternatively, you can use CAP in SAP Build Code, or other cloud-based setups, such as GitHub codespaces.

Prerequisites

• Node.js — required for installing the cds command line interface
• SQLite — included in macOS and Linux → install it on Windows
• A Terminal — for using the cds command line interface (CLI)
• A Text Editor → we recommend VS Code with CDS plugin

Installation

• With the prerequisites met, install the cds toolkit globally:

  npm add -g @sap/cds-dk

  Visit the Troubleshooting guide if you encounter any errors.

• Run cds to check whether installation was successful:

  cds

  You see some output like that:

  USAGE
  
      cds <command> [<args>]
      cds <src>  =  cds compile <src>
      cds        =  cds help
  
  COMMANDS
  
      i | init        jump-start cds-based projects
      a | add         add a feature to an existing project
      c | compile     compile cds models to different outputs
      s | serve       run your services in local server
      w | watch       run and restart on file changes
      r | repl        read-eval-event loop
      e | env         inspect effective configuration
      b | build       prepare for deployment
      d | deploy      deploy to databases or cloud
      v | version     get detailed version information
      ? | help        get detailed usage information
  
    Learn more about each command using:
    cds help <command> or
    cds <command> --help

Optional

• Java & Maven — if you're going for Java development → see instructions.
• git — if you go for more than just some quick trials.

Starting Projects

• Use cds init to start a CAP project, and then open it in VS Code:

  cds init bookshop

  code bookshop

  Assumes you activated the code command on macOS as documented

Project Structure

The default file structure of CAP projects is as follows:

bookshop/        # Your project's root folder
├─ app/          # UI-related content
├─ srv/          # Service-related content
├─ db/           # Domain models and database-related content
├─ package.json  # Configuration for cds + cds-dk
└─ readme.md     # A readme placeholder

CAP has defaults for many things that you'd have to configure in other frameworks. The goal is that things should just work out of the box, with zero configuration, whenever possible. You can override these defaults by a specific configuration if you need to do so.

See an example for configuring custom project layouts...

package.json

{ ...
  "cds": {
    "folders": {
       "db": "database/",
       "srv": "services/",
       "app": "uis/"
    }
  }
}

Explore the defaults in your project

cds env ls defaults

Learn more about project-specific configuration.

Convention over configuration

We recommend sticking to CAP's way of Convention over Configuration to benefit from things just working out of the box. Only override the defaults if you really need to do so.

Learning More

After the initial setup, we recommend continuing as follows while you grow as you go...:

#	Guide	Description
1	Introduction – What is CAP?	Learn about key benefits and value propositions.
2	Bookshop by capire	Build your first CAP application within 4-44 minutes.
3	Best Practices	Key concepts & rationales to understand → must read.
4	Anti Patterns	Misconceptions & bad practices to avoid → must read.
5	Learn More	Find samples, videos, blogs, tutorials, and so on.

Grow as you go...

After these getting started-level introductions, you would continuously revisit these guides to deepen your understanding and as reference docs:

#	Guides & References	Description
6	Cookbook	Walkthroughs for the most common tasks.
7	CDS Java Node.js Tools	The reference docs for these respective areas.
8	Plugins	Curated list of recommended Calesi plugins.
9	Releases	Your primary source to stay up to date.
10	Resources	About support channels, community, ...

This also reflects the overall structure of this documentation.