Task 12 - Give us feedback about this challenge (July Developer Challenge - "Reverse APIs")

[qmacro]

This last (bonus) task of the July Developer Challenge on "Reverse APIs" is a simple but important one. We want to know what you thought of this month's challenge. Reply to this discussion thread and tell us what you liked, what you didn't like, what you learned, whether you found it helpful, enjoyable, or something else! We'd love to know, because only with feedback can we make things better and improve how we help you be successful (after all, that's our mission!).

Thank you in advance for the feedback, and thank you for participating!

[dvvelzen]

Hi DJ, I think it was a nice and well explained series. The main thing I've learned / didn't use before was the `cds repl`. Though this actually came from your friday's series and not directly from this dev challenge 🙂 

[AndrewBarnard]

Hi DJ, Thanks for the nice little set of challenges.

One of the things I've been pondering is the different styles for implementing the function / action logic. I know that the documentation mentions examples like:

I've consistently used a slightly different style - shown below - and it seems to work. 

I've found this style of implementation in the .js file to work, even though I don't find it documented. I use a class with the same name as the service  I don't provide the extends cds.Service or cds.ApplicationService and no init() and this.on etc.  And where I need async I just declare the function as an async function. 
Perhaps a deeper dive on the implementation approachs of functions and actions?

[qmacro]

(has something happened to the formatting here - the code samples are difficult to read all on one line?)

[qmacro]

Thanks Andrew, and thanks for sharing the code sample styles. It's fascinating. I would love to do a deep dive on that some day! 

[spassaro]

You definetely should!!! You want it, we want it, everyone want it 😂

[johna69]

Great series, well paced and added some new tools to my toolbox. ngrok is going to get a lot of use.

I haven't coded as much as I'd have liked recently, so these challenges are a great refresher.

Looking forward to seeing others solutions.

Cheers
JohnA

[YogSSohanee]

Some important highlight learning for me has to be repl, action definition and implementation, bound and unbound functions. I have started following your weekly live series and it has also helped a lot in understanding important aspects of CAP in a very friendly manner. Much appreciated!

[MioYasutake]

I liked the style of 'Reverse APIs' where we implement our services and validate them against the tester server because we get immediate feedback on whether we have met the requirements.

The task 6 was most challenging for me because I had just upgraded my cds version to 8, and passing a plain array to an action did not work out-of-the-box. Thanks to your detailed explanations, @qmacro , I learned how things have changed between versions 7 and 8.

To speak about the 'what I didn't like' part, it was simply the number of tasks! Eleven tasks in total were intimidating, and I actually hesitated to start the challenge. I'm glad that I finished them all, though.

[Liyon_SV]

Thank you so much for this series. I recently started learning CAP, and it was really helpful for understanding the concepts better. I learned a lot from the challenge, the background information provided, and the responses from other participants.

I’m not sure if this is possible within the scope of the developer challenge, but including scenarios that are closer to real-world situations could make the concepts easier to grasp. Additionally, adding tasks that show how CAP integrates with other technologies, like Fiori, could be useful for learning how to develop full-stack apps.

Thank you once again for this wonderful set of challenges.

[sudarshan_b]

Hello DJ,

Thank you for this awesome series of tasks, it was well paced. I like the instructions / hints in each task which were precise but also super clear. As most of the other participants mentioned, the REPL was a highlight for me. From the latest task, the desctucturing is still little tricky for me and I now I know where to spend more time on 🙂 

Overall, a nice hands-on experience for a new CAP learner like me, and looking forward to more such challenges.

Thank you again!

[spassaro]

I really loved it generally speaking, so really I would not change anything about this challenge in particular. In my wish list, I still think that CAP documentation (which is great) lacks some "from 0 to hero" section about topics regarding: 

-How to integrate an open-source Front-End technology like React. I know, in CAP samples there are some "vue.js" example, but still, I'd love a step by step challenge involving some "non-Fiori" example.

-Where (in my humble opinion) CAP can really shine is combined with event mesh/AEM capabilities to populate in nearly real-time a HANA Cloud DB with backend data, and push  some data back into the S4Hana. Too much  for a developer challenge? It' shouldn' be :). Or maybe some one can host a "Developer Olympics Game"...😂

-Eventing in general. How to make different cap services "talking to each others".

-Deploying. 

And a tons of different other things 🙂

Thank you for everything!

[johna69]

I can't answer for the CAP team and React, but my team built out a gamification app for a recent event that was React and CAP (simple db). @sneha_govind was the lead developer and shared her experiences here:

https://community.sap.com/t5/application-development-blog-posts/application-development-using-react-...

Hopefully that is some help for you.

[krishnan-jr]

Hi DJ,
This Challenge was engaging and educational, offering practical tasks that significantly enhanced my understanding and skills. I appreciated the well-structured progression of the tasks, making the learning experience enjoyable and effective.

Looking forward to more challenges like this.

Next i would like to see something which involves the use of event based features.

And thank you DJ and all the Developer Advocates for sharing the knowledge.

[Alpesa1990]

First of all, congratulations for the challenge @qmacro 

I think that the level of quality that is exposed in each challange is increasing, not only because of the practicality of the examples and their simplicity in following them, but also because of the level of depth that they reach, allowing you to understand all the tools that we use.

Thanks so much for all your work!

[MatLakaemper]

Hi DJ, 

I think this challenge huge but fantastic.
A lot of accompanying information in an excellent didactical shape.

In Conjunction with the Back-To-Basic sessions i feel best prepared in the CAP-Environment

I hope you continue in this way and i am looking forward to the next CAP-Challenge.

Kind Regards,
Matthias

[M-K]

This was a great introduction into that topic (and beyond) and I learned many new things here.

For me being a newbie to CF, finding out how to deploy and run an app there was challenging at first. But after that hurdle the tasks were instructive and I liked that encoraging "have a look around" in the different tasks.

Thank you @qmacro !

[sachin_sap]

This challenge, complemented the back to basic series very well as a hands on session!
I hope there's a plan to start intermediate and CAP expert series with corresponding challenges.

Look forward to more engaging content from you on CAP! 

[geek]

In the main it's been a very positive set of challenges. My main problem has been the lack of basic worked examples within the CQL documentation. It's also a little odd that "CDS REPL" was introduced at the last minute, because of some other blog series, of which I wasn't aware.

[qmacro]

Thanks! Can you please explain what you mean about "t's also a little odd that "CDS REPL" was introduced at the last minute, because of some other blog series, of which I wasn't aware"? Cheers. 

[gphadnis2000]

Hi DJ,

One of the exciting challenges in CAP and similar to CAP basics journey on Youtube video.

Each task was really challenging and provided some new learning.This will help a lot in future coming from ABAP background and have good hands on on CAP Programming Model.

Also looking forward to similar challenges in future.

Thanks and Regards,

Gaurav Phadnis

[jmb25]

Hi DJ,

I really appreciate this challenge, giving me the opportunity to check my understanding of your fabulous hands-on sessions.

The fact I can use my own style on writing the code is a great +

Thx

JMB

[vineelaallamnen]

It is nice to practice these challenges and being a new CAP developer i enjoyed every bit of it.