CSDL Explorer

A terminal explorer for OData CSDL metadata. Parse any $metadata XML and discover entities, properties, relationships, and field attributes — then query live OData services directly from the terminal.

Homepage | PyPI | GitHub

Why

OData services expose their schema through $metadata but those XML documents can be enormous (10MB+, 700+ entities). This tool parses the CSDL and gives you fast, searchable access to every entity, property, navigation relationship, and annotation.

Particularly useful with SAP SuccessFactors, where documentation says "Worker Category" but the actual field is customString17.

Install

pip install csdl-explore          # Rich REPL
pip install csdl-explore[tui]     # + Textual TUI (tree nav, split panes, query builder)

Quick Start

csdl-explore metadata.xml                    # Interactive REPL
csdl-explore metadata.xml --tui              # Full TUI
csdl-explore metadata.xml search contract    # Search fields
csdl-explore metadata.xml entity EmpJob      # Entity details
csdl-explore metadata.xml tree EmpJob        # Visual tree

Features

• Rich REPL — colored tables, visual trees, entity comparison
• Textual TUI — tree navigation, tabbed views, split panes, navigation graph
• Live OData queries — visual query builder with filter, select, expand, orderby
• SAP SuccessFactors auth — Bearer, Basic, OAuth2 SAML
• Picklist exploration — usage analysis, impact analysis, live value fetching
• Headless mode — all commands work non-interactively for scripts and AI assistants
• Search — across entity names, property names, labels, and picklist values
• Themes — Terminal green + amber accent (default), Classic

Interactive REPL

$ csdl-explore metadata.xml

╭─────────────────────────────────────────╮
│             CSDL Explorer               │
│         Loaded 735 entities             │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────╯

csdl> search contract
┏━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Type   ┃ Entity    ┃ Match           ┃ Details ┃
┣━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ PROP   ┃ EmpJob    ┃ .contractType   ┃ String  ┃
┃ NAV    ┃ EmpJob    ┃ .contractTypeNav┃         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━┛

csdl> tree EmpJob
EmpJob
├── Keys
│   ├── seqNumber Edm.Int64
│   ├── startDate Edm.DateTime
│   └── userId Edm.String
├── Properties (45)
│   ├── businessUnit Edm.String
│   └── ... and 43 more
├── Custom Fields (24)
│   ├── customString7 Edm.String
│   └── ... and 23 more
└── Navigation (8)
    ├── employmentNav -> EmpEmployment
    └── ... and 7 more

Commands

Command	Aliases	Description
entities		List all entity types
entity <name>	e	Show all properties of an entity
tree <name>	t	Show entity as visual tree
search <term>	s	Search entities and properties
custom <entity>	c	Show custom fields
nav <entity>		Show navigation properties
diff <e1> <e2>		Compare two entities
path <entity>	paths	Suggest JSON paths
emp / per		List Emp*/Per* entities (SAP SF)
picklists		List all picklists (JSON)
picklist <name>	pk	Fetch picklist values from live API
batch-picklists <entity>		Fetch all picklist values for an entity
query <entity>		Execute OData query
model [entities]		Show data model overview

OData Queries

csdl-explore metadata.xml query EmpJob \
  --select "userId,company,businessUnit" \
  --filter "company eq 'ACME'" \
  --top 10

Query flags: --select, --filter, --orderby, --orderby-dir, --top, --expand, --asof-date, --from-date, --to-date

CLI Options

Option	Description
--tui	Launch full Textual TUI
--base-url <url>	OData service base URL
--auth-type <type>	none, bearer, basic, oauth2
--format <fmt>	table, json, json-compact, csv
--wide	Full column widths
--filter <pattern>	Filter properties by name glob
--json-only	JSON output only (for scripts)

Connecting to an OData Service

CSDL Explorer can query live OData services — not just parse static metadata. You need a base URL and credentials.

Auth Types

Type	Description
none	No authentication
bearer	Static Bearer token in the Authorization header
basic	HTTP Basic Auth (username + password)
oauth2	SAP SAML Bearer assertion flow (IDP → token exchange)

Inline Credentials

Pass connection flags directly:

# Bearer token
csdl-explore metadata.xml --base-url https://api.example.com/odata/v2 \
  --auth-type bearer --bearer-token YOUR_TOKEN \
  query EmpJob --top 5

# Basic auth
csdl-explore metadata.xml --base-url https://api.example.com/odata/v2 \
  --auth-type basic --username admin --password secret \
  picklist ecJobCode

.env File (Recommended)

Place a .env file next to your metadata XML with the same stem name. If your metadata is metadata.xml, create metadata.env:

SAP_BASE_URL=https://api.example.com/odata/v2
SAP_AUTH_TYPE=bearer
SAP_BEARER_TOKEN=your-token-here

Then just run commands — credentials are loaded automatically:

csdl-explore metadata.xml query EmpJob --top 5
csdl-explore metadata.xml picklist ecJobCode

CLI flags override .env values when both are present.

All .env keys:

Key	Description
SAP_BASE_URL	OData service base URL
SAP_AUTH_TYPE	none, bearer, basic, oauth2
SAP_BEARER_TOKEN	Bearer token
SAP_USERNAME	Basic auth username
SAP_PASSWORD	Basic auth password
SAP_IDP_URL	OAuth2: SAML IDP endpoint
SAP_TOKEN_URL	OAuth2: Token exchange endpoint
SAP_CLIENT_ID	OAuth2: Client ID
SAP_USER_ID	OAuth2: User ID for assertion
SAP_COMPANY_ID	OAuth2: Company ID
SAP_PRIVATE_KEY	OAuth2: Private key for signing
SAP_GRANT_TYPE	OAuth2: Grant type

TUI Connection

In the Textual TUI, credentials are configured through the auth modal (accessible from the Query tab). The TUI also reads the .env file on startup, so if you've already configured it for the CLI, the TUI picks it up automatically.

Textual TUI

pip install csdl-explore[tui]
csdl-explore metadata.xml --tui

Key	Action
/	Focus search
Escape	Clear search
t	Toggle tree sidebar
Ctrl+T	Cycle theme
Ctrl+W	Close current tab
?	Help
q	Quit

Python API

from csdl_explore import CSDLExplorer
from pathlib import Path

explorer = CSDLExplorer.from_file(Path("metadata.xml"))

# Search
for r in explorer.search("worker"):
    print(f"{r.entity}.{r.property}: {r.prop_type}")

# Entity details
entity = explorer.get_entity("EmpJob")
for prop in entity.properties.values():
    print(f"{prop.name}: {prop.type} (label={prop.label})")

# Custom fields, comparison, picklist usage
fields = explorer.get_custom_fields("EmpJob")
comp = explorer.compare_entities("EmpCompensation", "EmpPayCompRecurring")
usage = explorer.get_picklist_usage()

Supported Services

Any OData service with CSDL $metadata. Tested with:

• SAP SuccessFactors (full annotation support: labels, picklists, CRUD flags)
• SAP S/4HANA OData
• Standard OData v2/v3 services

License

MIT