How to use REST API in SAP Analytics Cloud to upda...

former_member388925 · ‎12-04-2020

Introduction

Currently, I am employed as a Business Process Consultant in the SAP Analytics & Insight Team, primarily focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud.

More and more customers are using iFrame to embed SAP Analytics Cloud into external web apps and 3^rd party software, e.g. salesforce.com. By modifying the URL parameters of the embedded SAP Analytics Cloud iFrame, it is possible to hide the main menu, toolbar and pagebar and to embed SAP Analytics Cloud in the look and feel of the web app. This creates a homogeneous appearance for the enduser and results in single point of entry.

While using SAP Analytics Cloud embedded, the question on how to update the user profile settings occurs regularly.

It is possible to use the SCIM API (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) to update the user profile (e.g. changing the Data Access Language, Language or Date Formatting) and simultaneously supporting the single frontend illusion.

In this blog I describe the process of updating the user profile using the REST API based on SCIM.

Configuration Steps

Configuration SAP Analytics Cloud

I am using basic authentication against the token service. The first step is to create an Oauth client in SAP Analytics Cloud.

In SAP Analytics Cloud I go to 'System' - 'Administration' and open the tab 'App Integration'.

Figure 1: Adding OAuth Clients in SAP Analytics Cloud

By clicking on 'Add a New OAuth Client' a new pop-up window opens

Figure 2: create OAuth Clients in SAP Analytics Cloud

I select 'API Access' in the 'Purpose'-Field. My goal is to update the users, which is the reason for selecting 'User Provisioning' in the 'Access'-Field. After entering the information, I click 'Add'.

By creating the new OAuth client, I get an 'OAuth Client ID' and a 'Secret'. This is important for the next steps and I copy this information to my clipboard.

Figure 3: OAuth Client Information

General SCIM API

SAP Analytics Cloud exposes a REST API based on SCIM 2.0. This API allows you to

Create, read, update, and delete users and teams.

Set user profile preferences.

Assign existing roles to users and teams.

Detailed information regarding SCIM 2.0 can be found here

From now on, I need a tool called Postman. Postman is a tool to test and operate RESTful APIs. It is a client Software.

Basis Authentication against the token service via Postman

Open Postman

Step #1: Create a new Request

Click on GET Request

Figure 4: Create new request in postman

In the request I enter the following parameters for connecting to SAP Analytics Cloud:

GET: https://<SAC tenant>.authentication.<Data center>.hana.ondemand.com/oauth/token?grant_type=client_credentials

Authorization:
- Select TYPE 'Basic Auth'
- Enter the username and the secret from our OAuth client
  - Username Postman = OAuth client ID
  - Password Postman = Secret

Figure 5: request OAuth access token

I click 'Send'. If everything is set up correctly, I will get a response with an access token (Status 200). This token is valid for 1 hour.

Response:

403: Not authorized

400: Bad request

200: OK

Figure 6: Obtain OAuth access token

I must pass this access_token as a bearer token in the Authorization header of all following API requests. It is important to copy the access_token without "". Having this access_token, I could already post a GET request for getting the users. For changing the users, I need an additional csrf token (Cross-Site-Request-Forgery).

Step #2: Obtain x-csrf-token

Create a new GET request

GET: https://<your-SAC-system>.<region>.sapanalytics.cloud/api/v1/scim/Users

Authorization TYPE: No Auth

Figure 7: Authorization Type for obtaining x-csrf-token

Include the following headers with your GET request
- Authorization Bearer <Access_Token> (This is the access token I know from step 1)
- x-sap-sac-custom-auth true
- x-csrf-token fetch

Figure 8: Headers for obtaining x-csrf-token

Click 'Send'

If everything is set up I will get a X-csrf-token in the Headers of the response.

Figure 9: Response with x-csrf-token

Step #3: Update user profile

For this step I need the access token and the x-csrf-token that I obtained in the previous steps.
At first, I need to retrieve the current user profile with a GET request.

Create a new GET request

GET: https://<your-SAC-system>.<region>.sapanalytics.cloud/api/v1/scim/Users/<username>;

Authorization TYPE: No Auth

Include the following headers with the GET request:
- Authorization Bearer <Access_Token> (The access token we know from step 1)
- x-sap-sac-custom-auth true
- x-csrf-token <x-csrf-token> (Step 2)

Figure 10: GET request for user profile

In the response body I get all the information about the user. I copy this response body.

Now I can update the current user profile with a PUT request.

Change the request from GET to PUT

PUT: https://<your-SAC-system>.<region>.sapanalytics.cloud/api/v1/scim/Users/<username>;

Authorization TYPE: No Auth

Include the following headers with the GET request:
- Authorization: Bearer <Access_Token> (The access token we know from step 1)
- x-sap-sac-custom-auth: true
- x-csrf-token: <x-csrf-token> (Step 2)

Chose raw as format and select JSON from the dropdown box.

Paste the response body from the previous GET request (i.e. from the GET request which delivered user profile) to the PUT request body and change one of the parameters.

You can find all the parameters that can be changed here.

Figure 11: Update user with copying and changing body

If everything is correct I will get a “Status 200” notification

Also, I will see the updated body response of the user.

I can doublecheck the new settings in the SAC Profile settings.

Response:

404: Not Found

403: Not authorized

400: Bad Request

200: OK

Figure 12: Profile settings SAC

Conclusion

As described in the introduction, there are many more possibilities using the REST API, as the API allows you to

Create, read, update, and delete users and teams.

Set user profile preferences.

Assign existing roles to users and teams.

For a better understanding how the authentication works all the steps are done manually. With Postman it is also possible to automate this with variables.

Go ahead and check out the SAP Analytics Cloud APIs in your system, I am looking forward to your feedback and comments!

mfoeken · ‎12-07-2020

Hi Lucas,

First of all, great blog. Nice hands-on guide on how to use SCIM.

I have one question which I hope you know the answer to: What happens with the content of a user when you delete this via SCIM? If you delete a user via the SAC UI you get different options. Are there additional parameters available?

Kind regards,

Martijn van Foeken | Interdobs

former_member91652 · ‎12-07-2020

Hi Lukas,

thanks for your very interesting blog.

Could this scenario be used in a case where a sac report is embedded in a iframe on external web, and users don’t need to enter credentials (using a concurrent user) ?

thanks

Anthony

former_member388925 · ‎12-08-2020

Hi Anthony,

even with SAC embedded reports you have to enter your credentials. Of course, if you are using SSO for the web app you could pass these credentials to SAC.

Best regards,

Lukas

former_member388925 · ‎12-08-2020

Hi Martijn,

thank you very much for your feedback. Yes, you are right when deleting the user in SAC you have two options

Transfer all content to another user

Delete private files and only transfer public and shared content

You could use the SCIM API to remove the user from SAC. Doing so will delete their personal content and public content will not be re-assigned.

Best regards,

Lukas

Gabs · ‎12-09-2020

thanks lukas

Anthony

jaewon_lee1 · ‎12-11-2020

Hello Lukas,

Thanks for your great blog!. It's very helpful information for me.

I have a question about Team Provisioning API. User Provisioning API ( /api/v1/scim/Users/ ) is working fine like your blog.

When I tried Team Provisioning API, Groups API ( /api/v1/scim/Groups ) is working. But, Team API ( /api/v1/scim/Groups/<Team_ID> ) return not found page error(404).

For example, Even I can find Team ID 'AA' from Groups API return value. '/api/v1/scim/Groups/AA' is not working with 404 error.

Have I any mistake when I call Team API?

Best regards,

Jaewon.

former_member388925 · ‎12-11-2020

Hi Jaewon, good catch! I have the same issue and it looks like something is not working correctly. I checked the help page but this is exactly what we do: https://help.sap.com/viewer/298f82da4b184d1fb825b7ffe365e94a/release/en-US/a0572791c8444bda9084d8b07...

I will get back to you, when I have an answer.
Best regards,
Lukas

jaewon_lee1 · ‎12-14-2020

Hi Lukas,

I've found a notes # about TEAM API error.

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2857395

That API had defect in SAC Public API. As Notes, It was fixed at the 2019.24 version. But some additional setting is needed to use TEAM API as I understand.

I hope it will help you to find answer.

Best regards,

Jaewon.

former_member388925 · ‎12-14-2020

Hi Jaewon, these are the only workarounds for SAC running on cloud foundry so far
Best regards,
Lukas

dohaidang_le · ‎01-29-2021

Hi,

the response of the GET request to v1/scim/users only consists of 50 items per page.

Do you have any idea on how to get the next page of the response or increase the number of items?

{

    "schemas": [

        "urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:core:2.0"

    ],

    "totalResults": 122,

    "itemsPerPage": 50,

    "startIndex": 1,

    "Resources": [

        {

            "schemas":

Best regards,

Dang

dohaidang_le · ‎01-29-2021

Hi Lukas,

i can see the region of your tenant ist eu10. All cloud foundry tenants have a 2 digit number in the region (eu10, us20 etc.), don't they?

So your tenant must be cloud foundry already.

Best regards,

Dang

former_member388925 · ‎02-01-2021

Hi Dang,

yes, the tenant is running on CF. They are mentioning in the Notes that the issue happens on non-SAP data centers (Cloud Foundry / CF).

The workaround creating the teams using SCIM API instead of creating a team through SAC it is working.

former_member388925 · ‎02-02-2021

Hi Dang,

the itemsPerPage are probably based on the pageination and you can't adjust them. Nevertheless, you could use the display parameters

https://docs.wso2.com/display/IS580/Using+the+SCIM+2.0+REST+APIs#UsingtheSCIM2.0RESTAPIs-GET/FilterG...

In this case you will get the entries from startIndex=100

https://<your-SAC-system>.<region>.sapanalytics.cloud/api/v1/scim/Users?startIndex=100

Best regards,

Lukas

quovadis · ‎05-08-2021

Hello Lukas,

Nice blog!

However I recently hit a roadblock when trying to create or modify users (POST and PUT verbs). Even if I followed the documentation I would always get a 403 (forbidden) error code as a result.

It appears that the culprit was the very usage of Postman which intercepts the cookies (from the GET call that was used to fetch the x-csrf-token in the first place) and automatically adds these cookies to the following POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE REST API call as described here.

I published the 403 when trying to create user with the SCIM REST API blog that explains the importance of providing the session cookie(s) that will assert the validity of the x-csrf-token.

best regards

Piotr

former_member388925 · ‎05-21-2021

Hi Piotr, thanks for clarifying and for creating the Blog related to the 403 (forbidden) error.

pmelli · ‎05-29-2021

Dang,

You could loop through the pages to get all the users or all the teams. I implemented the logic for a customer. Basically, pass the index the count per page to the url. Note that the count default is 50 items per pages and the max was 200

// from the first query, found the statistic and get the first page.

jsonObject = new JSONObject(responseData);

int iTotalResult = (int) jsonObject.get("totalResults");
System.out.println(" iTotalResult: " + iTotalResult);
int iItemsPerPage = (int) jsonObject.get("itemsPerPage");
System.out.println(" itemsPerPage: " + iItemsPerPage);
int iStartIndex = (int) jsonObject.get("startIndex");
System.out.println(" startIndex: " + iStartIndex);

int pages = iTotalResult / iItemsPerPage;
System.out.println("Pages " + pages);

int modulo = iTotalResult % iItemsPerPage;
System.out.println("Modulo " + modulo);

---

get the teams or users from the first page and add them in a container

//
// loop on groups from one page
//
for (int i = 0; i < jsonArrayRessources.length(); i++) {
JSONObject jsonSingleGroup = jsonArrayRessources.getJSONObject(i);

jsonArrayAllTeams.put(jsonSingleGroup);

}

---

then get the remaining pages

// retrieve the remaining teams

for (int j=1;j<=pages;j++) {
idx = j*count;

url = sURL + _sGroupsEndPoint + "?startIndex="+idx+"&count="+count;

// retrieve the remaining teams (modulo)

idx = pages*count;

url = sURL + _sGroupsEndPoint + "?startIndex="+idx+"&count="+count;

Regards,

Patrick

former_member765075 · ‎09-03-2021

Hello Lukas,

I need to trigger data load from external url into SAC using the REST API ., I created a new oath client. but i don't know how to test the API for this case. please suggest.

Regards

vasanth R

dvankempen · ‎09-26-2021

For the interested reader, we have started to record a video tutorial series about the SAP Analytics Cloud user and team provisioning API

https://blogs.sap.com/2021/09/25/sap-analytics-cloud-user-and-team-provisioning-api-hands-on-video-tutorials/

dan_dukan5 · ‎11-30-2021

Hi

Thanks for this very instersting blog

I'm testing API for SAC but in postman to get list of users I'm always getting HTML result:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<head>

<title>Login</title>

content="saml/discovery?returnIDParam=idp&entityID=https://xxxxxxxxxx.authentication.eu10.hana.ondemand.com&idp=hanacloudservices-eu.accounts.ondema&isPassive=true">

</script>

<style>

.header-image {

null

}

</style>

</head>

</div>

<h2 style="color:#666666 !important;">Welcome to xxxxxxx!</h2>

<div>

<div>

<a href="saml/discovery?returnIDParam=idp&entityID=https://xxxxx.authentication.eu10.hana.ondemand.com&idp=hanacloudservices-eu.accounts.ondema&isPassive=true"

class="saml-login-link">hanacloudservices-eu.accounts.ondema</a>

</div>

</div>

</div>

<div class="sapUiSraLoginCopyright"

title="Version: 74.1.0, Commit: d4c3fd3, Timestamp: 2019-09-05T21:25:00+0000, UAA: https://authentication.eu10.hana.ondemand.com">

</div>

</body>

</html>