Roadmap

Where cap2UI5 is, what is limited today, and what is intended. No dates.

How to read this

Known limits today is true of the current build. What's next is intended, not promised. If a limit matters to your project, check the issues before you build around it.

What just changed

cap2UI5 stopped being a hand-written JavaScript port of abap2UI5 and became a CAP plugin that hosts abap2UI5's own runtime. That retired the largest limitation this page used to carry — and it retired the pipelines, the vendored core and 82,804 lines of generated code with it. The reasoning and the measurements are in Where cap2UI5 Comes From.

Since then the JavaScript side closed its own gaps. 0.2.0 made the client an app receives abap2UI5's z2ui5_if_client, every method under its ABAP name, exported z2ui5_cl_ui5_view_builder and shipped TypeScript declarations; 0.3.0 added npx --no-install cap2ui5 abap2js, which translates an abap2UI5 app class into a cap2UI5 app line for line, and apps that come from a package — @cap2ui5/samples is 71 of abap2UI5's samples that way. 0.4.0 sends the browser only the fields an app binds, gzips the page and the roundtrips, and hosts runtime 1.146.0, whose frontend does the approuter's CSRF token handshake and whose accelerations make a table of thousands of rows usable. The details are in the plugin's CHANGELOG.

Known limits today

Not yet run on BTP

Behind an approuter, the route cds add approuter generates should work as it is since 0.4.0: the frontend in runtime 1.146.0 does the X-CSRF-Token handshake the approuter asks for. That is read from both sides' code, not yet run end to end against XSUAA or IAS — see Deployment.

The apps are JavaScript, and so are the errors

A mistyped field name throws at runtime, not at edit time: client._bind("nmae") names the app's known fields, and an untypeable field is named in a warning. The package ships TypeScript declarations, so an annotated client — /** @param {import("@cap2ui5/cds-plugin").Client<{ name: string }>} client */ — gets completion and checked field names in the editor; nothing checks an unannotated app.

abap2js translates part of ABAP

npx --no-install cap2ui5 abap2js knows the ABAP an abap2UI5 app is written in and refuses the rest — a field-symbol, SELECT, a sy- field — with file, row and column. What it refuses you translate by hand. Of abap2UI5's 129 samples, it translates 69 today.

UI5 comes from the CDN, and only from the CDN

The page embeds the abap2UI5 frontend, not UI5 itself: it bootstraps from sdk.openui5.org, and there is no local /resources route to fall back to. A server without outbound internet access renders nothing until you host a UI5 distribution yourself and point cfg.src at it in a user exit. Shipping a local copy in the plugin is open.

The browser test follows the same road: it renders against the CDN, and where there is none it answers the CDN's requests from a local openui5-dist — so a control introduced after that fallback's release is covered by a CDN run and not by a sandboxed one.

The documentation is mid-migration

The plugin merged and this site is catching up. The entry points, the concept guides, the reference and the examples describe the plugin. A handful of background pages may still carry the port's mechanics; if a page contradicts Architecture, the architecture page is right.

What's next

Teach abap2js more ABAP. Some of its refusals say "not supported yet".

Finish this documentation.

What is deliberately not planned

A view builder of cap2UI5's own. The builder a JavaScript app uses is abap2UI5's z2ui5_cl_ui5_view_builder, rendered by the transpiled class in the runtime — see The view builder. A UI5 XML string in a template literal works as well.

A second implementation of anything upstream owns. The whole point of the current design is that there is one implementation of the framework. A feature that belongs in abap2UI5 belongs upstream, where it also reaches every ABAP user — the four seams and a bug fix went that way already.

Next

• Where cap2UI5 Comes From — the change of strategy
• Architecture — what the plugin is and is not