Query SAP SuccessFactors Data Using the OData SDK for PHP

The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for SAP SuccessFactors, exposes SAP SuccessFactors data (or data from any of 200+ other ADO.NET Providers) as Web services. You can follow the procedure below to work with SAP SuccessFactors data as PHP objects.

Set Up the API Server

Follow the steps below to begin producing secure SAP SuccessFactors OData services:

Deploy

The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.

The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.

Connect to SAP SuccessFactors

After you deploy the API Server and the ADO.NET Provider for SAP SuccessFactors, provide authentication values and other connection properties needed to connect to SAP SuccessFactors by clicking Settings -> Connections and adding a new connection in the API Server administration console.

You can authenticate to SAP Success Factors using Basic authentication or OAuth with SAML assertion.

Basic Authentication

You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to SAP Success Factors. Note that the provider will reuse the session opened by SAP Success Factors using cookies. Which means that your credentials will be used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from SAP Success Factors will be used for authentication.

• Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
• User: set this to the username of your account.
• Password: set this to the password of your account.
• CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.

OAuth Authentication

You must provide values for the following properties, which will be used to get the access token.

• Url: set this to the URL of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed in the SAP support documentation (external link).
• User: set this to the username of your account.
• CompanyId: set this to the unique identifier of your company.
• OAuthClientId: set this to the API Key that was generated in API Center.
• OAuthClientSecret: the X.509 private key used to sign SAML assertion. The private key can be found in the certificate you downloaded in Registering your OAuth Client Application.
• InitiateOAuth: set this to GETANDREFRESH.

You can then choose the SAP SuccessFactors entities you want to allow the API Server access to by clicking Settings -> Resources.

Additionally, configure the API Server for compatibility with the OData SDK for PHP: Click Server -> Settings and in the OData section set Default Version to 2.0.

Authorize API Server Users

After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL. Access can also be restricted based on IP address; by default, only connections from the local machine are allowed.

For simplicity, we will authenticate to the API Server by setting the authtoken in the URL. This is not enabled by default; you will need to add the following lines to the API Server configuration file, settings.cfg.

The settings.cfg file is located in the data directory. In the .NET edition, the data directory is the app_data folder under the www folder. In the Java edition, the data directory's location depends on the operation system:

• Windows: C:\ProgramData\CData\SAPSuccessFactors\
• Unix or Mac OS X: ~/cdata/SAPSuccessFactors/

Work with SAP SuccessFactors Entities as PHP Objects

Follow the steps below to use the ODataPHP SDK to create a proxy class that will connect to the Web services exposed by the API Server.

1. Pass the URL to a command like the one below:

   php C:\PHPLib\ODataphp\PHPDataSvcUtil.php /uri=https://your-server:8032/api.rsc/@your-authtoken/ /out=C:\PHPLib\ODataphp\SAPSuccessFactorsEntities.php

   The preceding command defines classes from the metadata returned in the response from the OData endpoint, then outputs the class definitions to the specified folder.

   Both the API Server and the OData SDK for PHP support forms and Windows authentication. The API Server uses authtokens to authenticate users authorized to access the OData endpoint. You can supply authtokens in HTTP Basic authentication or append them to the OData URL.

   You can configure authorized users in the Settings -> Users section of the API Server administration console.

2. You can now start accessing SAP SuccessFactors data using an object-oriented interface in PHP. The code below creates a record of the ExtAddressInfo table and then retrieves the live data, showing the newly created record.

   require_once 'SAPSuccessFactorsEntities.php'; try{ $svc = new CData(); $extaddressinfo = new ExtAddressInfo(); $extaddressinfo->city = 'Springfield'; $svc->AddToExtAddressInfo($extaddressinfo); $svc->SetSaveChangesOptions(SaveChangesOptions::None); $svc->SaveChanges(); $response = $svc->extaddressinfo()->Execute(); foreach($response->Result as $extaddressinfo) echo $extaddressinfo->address1."
"; } catch (Exception $e) { //catch errors from the API Server echo $e->getError(), "\n"; }