Exploring API Specifications on the SAP API Business Hub

Dive into a comprehensive tutorial on exploring API specifications on the SAP API Business Hub. Learn about CAP, CDS, A2A, A2X, APIs, OData, EDMX, metadata, VS Code, CSDL, annotations, and curl. Explore the SAP S/4HANA product, focusing on OData V2 APIs and the Business Partner (A2X) API. Discover how to use the SAP API Business Hub, understand API endpoints, and try out sandbox environments. Examine API specification documents, explore EDMX files using VS Code and the OData CSDL Modeler extension, and learn to use curl for API interactions. Distinguish between service and metadata documents, recognize OData's origins, and import EDMX files into CAP projects for local mocking and serving.

Welcome and introduction with some extra rambling about my setup
Moving to the SAP API Business Hub
Starting to dive into the SAP S/4HANA product
Filtering down to the OData V2 APIs and the Business Partner A2X API
Exploring what the SAP API Business Hub tells us about this API schema, attrs, spec, extensibility, auth, SAP Cloud SDK support and more
Looking at some of the API endpoints and noticing the OData system query options, plus the classic OData v2 JSON response format with the 'd' property
Having our first 'try out' of an endpoint directly in the hub, in the sandbox
Understanding what the A_ prefix represents in the entity set names
Downloading and looking briefly at all the API specification documents JSON, YAML and EDMX
Fixing my neovim installation that I broke just before the live stream started
Staring at and exploring the EDMX the OData service metadata document for API_BUSINESS_PARTNER
Resorting to using Latin to convey what I'm trying to say #FAIL
Opening the API_BUSINESS_PARTNER.edmx file in VS Code
A great discussion on singular vs plural naming convention for entities
Opening the API_BUSINESS_PARTNER.edmx file with the OData CSDL Modeler extension - very diagram, much graphical, wow!
Kicking the tyres of the API from my own machine, with curl, working through the responses with an API key 401, then 307, and ultimately a binary gzipped payload
Distinguishing between the service document and the metadata document - the two "well known" documents of any OData service
Recognizing the origins of OData in the Atom syndication format XML elements
Fixing the name of the entity set we are reminded of the A2X nature of this API by the myriad annotations in the metadata
Importing the API_BUSINESS_PARTNER.edmx file into a new CAP Node.js project and having it mocked and served locally as an OData v4 service with our very own test data, with just one command and in only a couple of minutes!