Change Tracking Plugin for SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP)

The @cap-js/change-tracking package is a CDS plugin providing out-of-the box support for automatic capturing, storing, and viewing of the change records of modeled entities as simple as that:

1. Install the plugin: npm add @cap-js/change-tracking
2. Add @changelog annotations to your CDS models
3. Et voilà:

Table of Contents

• Change Tracking Plugin for SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP)
  • Table of Contents
  • Preliminaries
  • Setup
  • Annotations
    • Human-readable Types and Fields
    • Human-readable IDs
    • Human-readable Values
  • Test-drive locally
  • Change History View
  • Customizations
    • Altered table view
    • Disable lazy loading
  • Contributing
  • Code of Conduct
  • Licensing

Preliminaries

In this guide, we use the Incidents Management reference sample app as the base to add change tracking to. Clone the repository and apply the step-by-step instructions:

git clone https://github.com/cap-js/incidents-app
cd incidents-app
npm i

Alternatively, you can clone the incidents app including the prepared enhancements for change-tracking:

git clone https://github.com/cap-js/calesi --recursive
cd calesi
npm i

cds w samples/change-tracking

Setup

To enable change tracking, simply add this self-configuring plugin package to your project:

npm add @cap-js/change-tracking

Annotations

Warning

Please be aware that sensitive or personal data should not be change tracked, since viewing the log allows users to circumvent audit-logging.

All we need to do is to identify what should be change-tracked by annotating respective entities and elements in our model with the @changelog annotation. Following the best practice of separation of concerns, we do so in a separate file srv/change-tracking.cds:

using { ProcessorService } from './processor-service';

annotate ProcessorService.Incidents {
  customer @changelog: [customer.name];
  title    @changelog;
  status   @changelog;
}

annotate ProcessorService.Conversations with @changelog: [author, timestamp] {
  message  @changelog @Common.Label: 'Message';
}

The minimal annotation we require for change tracking is @changelog on elements, as for the elements title and status in the sample snippet above.

Additional identifiers or labels can be added to obtain more human-readable change records as described below.

Human-readable Types and Fields

By default the implementation looks up Object Type names or Field namesfrom respective @title or @Common.Label annotations, and applies i18n lookups. If no such annotations are given, the technical names of the respective CDS definitions are displayed.

For example, without the @title annotation, changes to conversation entries would show up with the technical entity name:

With an annotation, and possible i18n translations like so:

annotate Conversations with @title: 'Conversations';

We get a human-readable display for Object Type:

Human-readable IDs

The changelog annotations for Object ID are defined at entity level.

These are already human-readable by default, unless the @changelog definition cannot be uniquely mapped such as types enum or Association.

For example, having a @changelog annotation without any additional identifiers, changes to conversation entries would show up as simple entity IDs:

annotate ProcessorService.Conversations {

However, this is not advisable as we cannot easily distinguish between changes. It is more appropriate to annotate as follows:

annotate ProcessorService.Conversations with @changelog: [author, timestamp] {

Expanding the changelog annotation by additional identifiers [author, timestamp], we can now better identify the message change events by their respective author and timestamp.

Human-readable Values

The changelog annotations for New Value and Old Value are defined at element level.

They are already human-readable by default, unless the @changelog definition cannot be uniquely mapped such as types enum or Association.

For example, having a @changelog annotation without any additional identifiers, changes to incident customer would show up as UUIDs:

  customer @changelog;

Hence, here it is essential to add a unique identifier to obtain human-readable value columns:

  customer @changelog: [customer.name];

Test-drive locally

With the steps above, we have successfully set up change tracking for our reference application. Let's see that in action.

1. Start the server:

cds watch

2. Make a change on your change-tracked elements. This change will automatically be persisted in the database table (sap.changelog.ChangeLog) and made available in a pre-defined view, namely the Change History view for your convenience.

Change History View

Important

To ensure proper lazy loading of the Change History table, please use SAPUI5 version 1.120.0 or higher.
If you wish to disable this feature, please see the customization section on how to disable lazy loading.

If you have a Fiori Element application, the CDS plugin automatically provides and generates a view sap.changelog.ChangeView, the facet of which is automatically added to the Fiori Object Page of your change-tracked entities/elements. In the UI, this corresponds to the Change History table which serves to help you to view and search the stored change records of your modeled entities.

Customizations

Altered table view

The Change History view can be easily adapted and configured to your own needs by simply changing or extending it. For example, let's assume we only want to show the first 5 columns in equal spacing, we would extend srv/change-tracking.cds as follows:

using from '@cap-js/change-tracking';

annotate sap.changelog.ChangeView with @(
  UI.LineItem : [
    { Value: modification, @HTML5.CssDefaults: { width:'20%' }},
    { Value: createdAt,    @HTML5.CssDefaults: { width:'20%' }},
    { Value: createdBy,    @HTML5.CssDefaults: { width:'20%' }},
    { Value: entity,       @HTML5.CssDefaults: { width:'20%' }},
    { Value: objectID,     @HTML5.CssDefaults: { width:'20%' }}
  ]
);

In the UI, the Change History table now contains 5 equally-spaced columns with the desired properties:

For more information and examples on adding Fiori Annotations, see Adding SAP Fiori Annotations.

Disable lazy loading

To disable the lazy loading feature of the Change History table, you can add the following annotation to your srv/change-tracking.cds:

using from '@cap-js/change-tracking';

annotate sap.changelog.aspect @(UI.Facets: [{
  $Type : 'UI.ReferenceFacet',
  ID    : 'ChangeHistoryFacet',
  Label : '{i18n>ChangeHistory}',
  Target: 'changes/@UI.PresentationVariant',
  ![@UI.PartOfPreview]
}]);

The system now uses the SAPUI5 default setting ![@UI.PartOfPreview]: true, such that the table will always shown when navigating to that respective Object page.

Contributing

This project is open to feature requests/suggestions, bug reports etc. via GitHub issues. Contribution and feedback are encouraged and always welcome. For more information about how to contribute, the project structure, as well as additional contribution information, see our Contribution Guidelines.

Code of Conduct

We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone. By participating in this project, you agree to abide by its Code of Conduct at all times.

Licensing

Copyright 2023 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company and contributors. Please see our LICENSE for copyright and license information. Detailed information including third-party components and their licensing/copyright information is available via the REUSE tool.