Edit In Excel R2 – Part 2 (out of 2) – the final pieces

Posted on December 11, 2009 by freddykristiansen

It is time to collect the pieces.

The full Edit In Excel R2 solution looks like this

Slightly more complicated than the first version – but let me try to explain the pieces

NAVEditInExcel is the COM object, which we use from within NAV. This actually hasn’t changed a lot, the only small change is, that the EditInExcel method now takes a base URL, a company, a page and a view (compared to just a page and a view earlier).
NAVPageDynamicWebReference is the Dynamic Web Reference class and the NAVPageServiceHelper class – described here.
NAVPageFieldInfo contains the NAVFieldInfo class hierarchy for handling type weak pages, described here and used in the Conflict resolution dialog here.
NAVPageMergeForm is the conflict resolution dialog, described here.
NAVTemplate is the actual Excel Add-In which of course now makes use of Dynamic Page References and conflict resolution. It really haven’t changed a lot since the version described here – the major change is the pattern for handling conflict resolution.
EditInExcel Setup is the Client Setup program, this setup program needs to be run on all Clients
EditInExcelDemo is the Server Setup program, this setup program contains the Client Setup msi and places it in the ClientSetup folder for the ComponentHelper (which you can read about here) to autodeploy to clients. This setup also contains the .fob with the EditInExcel objects.

The Client Setup Program

Lets have a closer look at the Client Setup Program

This setup project includes primary output from the COM component and the Excel Add-in and calculated dependencies from that.

Note, that when deploying add-ins you have to add the .vsto and the .manifest files to the setup project yourself, the dependency finder doesn’t discover those. Also note, that all the vsto runtime dll’s etc are excluded from the install list, as we do not want to copy those DLL’s.

Instead I have built in a Launch condition for VSTO runtime 3.0, which is done in 2 steps:

First a Search on the Target Machine for component ID {AF68A0DE-C0CD-43E1-96DD-CBD9726079FD} (which is the component installation ID for VSTO 3.0 Runtime) and a launch condition stating that that search needs to return TRUE – else a message will appear with a URL for installing VSTO, which is:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=54EB3A5A-0E52-40F9-A2D1-EECD7A092DCB&displaylang=en

One more thing needed in the Client Setup program is to register the COM object. Now the Setup actually has a property you can set, indicating that the object should be registered as COM, but I couldn’t get that to work, so I added custom install actions to the NAVEditInExcel COM object:

and the code for the class, which is called by the installer looks like:

[RunInstaller(true)]
public partial class RegasmInstaller : Installer
{
public RegasmInstaller()
: base()
{
}

public override void Commit(IDictionary savedState)
{
base.Commit(savedState);
Regasm(false);
}

public override void Rollback(IDictionary savedState)
{
base.Rollback(savedState);
}

public override void Uninstall(IDictionary savedState)
{
base.Rollback(savedState);
Regasm(true);
}

private void Regasm(bool unregister)
{
string parameters = “/tlb /codebase”;
if (unregister)
parameters += ” /unregister”;
string regasmPath = RuntimeEnvironment.GetRuntimeDirectory() + @”regasm.exe”;
string dllPath = this.GetType().Assembly.Location;
if (!File.Exists(regasmPath))
throw new InstallException(“Registering assembly failed”);
if (!File.Exists(dllPath))
return;

Process process = new Process();
process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false; // Hides console window
process.StartInfo.FileName = regasmPath;
process.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format(“”{0}” {1}”, dllPath, parameters);
process.Start();

// When uninstalling we need to wait for the regasm to finish,
// before continuing and deleting the file we are unregistering
if (unregister)
{
process.WaitForExit(10000);
try
{
System.IO.File.Delete(System.IO.Path.ChangeExtension(dllPath, “tlb”));
}
catch
{
}
}
}
}

All of the above is captured in the NAVEditInExcelR2.msi – which is the output from the Edit In Excel Setup project. Running this .msi on a client will check pre-requisites, install the right DLL’s, register the COM and you should be good to go.

The Server Setup Program

The Server Setup program actually just needs to place the Client Setup Program in a ClientSetup folder and the .fob (NAV Objects) in the ServerSetup folder.

There are no pre-requisites, no actions no nothing – just copy the files.

After Copying the files on the Server – you need to import the .fob, run the setup code unit and you should be good to go.

Note, that this requires ComponentHelper1.03 (which you can read about here and download here) to run.

Wrapping up…

So, what started out as being a small garage project, ended up being somewhat more complicated and way more powerful. It runs with Office 2007 and Office 2010 (even though you cannot modify the project when Office 2010 beta2 is installed) and even though you might not need the actual Edit In Excel functionality – there are pieces of this that can be used for other purposes.

The source for the entire thing can be downloaded here and the EditInExcel Demo msi can be downloaded here.

Happy holidays

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Dynamic references to NAV Page Web Services in C# – take 2

Posted on December 4, 2009 by freddykristiansen

In this post from April, I explained how to make dynamic references to page based Web Services, but the post really left the developer with a lot of manual work to do using reflection.

So – I thought – why not create a couple of helper classes which makes it easier.

Basically I have created a generic NAVPageServiceHelper class, which encapsulates all the heavy lifting of reflection and leaves the developer with a set of higher level classes he can use.

The service helper will have a collection of classes explaining various information about the fields and has methods for getting or setting the value (and setting the corresponding _Specified automatically as well).

The primary reason for making this is of course to make Edit In Excel bind to any page without changing anything, but the method can be used in a lot of other scenarios.

2 projects: NAVPageFieldInfo and NAVPageDynamicWebReference

I split the PageServiceHelper and the PageFieldInfo into two seperate projects. NAVPageFieldInfo just contains the FieldInfo classes for all the supported field types and a collection class.

NAVPageFieldInfo is the abstract base class
BooleanFieldInfo is the field info class for a boolean field
OptionFieldInfo is the field info class for an option field
IntFieldInfo is the field info for…

You get it – all in all, the following types are supported:

String, Decimal, DateTime, Int, Option, Boolean

Furthermore, there is a class called NAVFields, which derives from List<NAVFieldInfo>, for keeping a collection of the fields.

NAVFields has a method called PopulateFieldsCollection, which takes an object type and a fields enum type and based on this, instantiates all the NAVFieldInfo classes – let’s look at the code.

/// <summary>
/// Populate Fields Collection with NAVPageFieldInfo for all properties in the record
/// Should works with any NAV 2009 Page exposed as WebService
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”objType”>Type of Object (typeof(Customer), typeof(Vendor), …)</param>
/// <param name=”fieldsType”>Type of the Enum holding the property names</param>
private void PopulateFieldsCollection(Type objType, Type fieldsType)
{
// Key property is not part of the Enum
// Add it manually as the first field
AddField(“Key”, objType);

// Run through the enum and add all fields
foreach (string field in Enum.GetNames(fieldsType))
{
AddField(field, objType);
}
}

/// <summary>
/// Add a NAVPageFieldInfo for a field to the fields collection
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”field”>Field name</param>
/// <param name=”objType”>Type of Object in which the field is (typeof(Customer), typeof(Vendor), …)</param>
private void AddField(string field, Type objType)
{
field = VSName(field);
PropertyInfo pi = objType.GetProperty(field, System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
if (pi != null)
{
NAVPageFieldInfo nfi = NAVPageFieldInfo.CreateNAVFieldInfo(objType, field, pi, objType.Namespace);
if (nfi != null)
{
// If we encounter unknown Field Types, they are just ignored
this.Add(nfi);
}
}
}

As you can see, the AddField method calls a static method on NAVPageFieldInfo to get a FieldInfo class of the right type created. That method looks like:

/// <summary>
/// Create a NAVPageFieldInfo object for a specific field
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”field”>Name of the property</param>
/// <param name=”pi”>PropertyInfo for the property on the record object</param>
/// <param name=”ns”>Namespace for the record object (namespace for the added WebServices proxy class)</param>
/// <returns>NAVPageFieldInfo or null if the type isn’t supported</returns>
public static NAVPageFieldInfo CreateNAVFieldInfo(Type objType, string field, System.Reflection.PropertyInfo pi, string ns)
{
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(string))
{
// String Property – is it the KeyField
if (field == “Key”)
return new KeyFieldInfo(field, pi, null);
else
return new StringFieldInfo(field, pi, null);
}
PropertyInfo piSpecified = objType.GetProperty(field + “Specified”, System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(decimal))
{
// Decimal Property
return new DecimalFieldInfo(field, pi, piSpecified);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(int))
{
// Integer Property
return new IntFieldInfo(field, pi, piSpecified);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(bool))
{
// Boolean Property
return new BooleanFieldInfo(field, pi, piSpecified);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(DateTime))
{
// DateTime Property
return new DateTimeFieldInfo(field, pi, piSpecified);
}
if (pi.PropertyType.Namespace == ns)
{
// Other Property Types, in the same namespace as the object
// These are enum’s – set up restrictions on OptionFields
return new OptionFieldInfo(field, pi, piSpecified, Enum.GetNames(pi.PropertyType));
}
return null;
}

No more magic!

And actually the constructor for NAVFields – takes the object type and the field type as parameters for the constructor:

public NAVFields(Type objType, Type fieldsType)
: base()
{
this.PopulateFieldsCollection(objType, fieldsType);
}

Meaning that all it takes to utilize the NAVFieldInfo subsystem is instantiating the NAVFields class, which doesn’t necessarily need a dynamic web reference helper, but could also be instantiated through:

NAVFields fields = new NAVFields(typeof(Customer), typeof(Customer_Fields));

If you have some code, which needs to access data loosely coupled, NAVFields is a great way to get going.

The other project is the NAVDynamicPageWebReference – which really is a combination of the Dynamic Web References post from April and a Page Service Helper class.

The way you get a reference to the Dynamic Web Reference is much like in the post from April:

Assembly customerPageRef = NAVPageDynamicWebReference.BuildAssemblyFromWSDL(
new Uri(“http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV/WS/CRONUS%20International%20Ltd./Page/Customer”), 5000);

Based on this, you now instantiate the Service Helper with the Assembly and the name of the Page:

NAVPageServiceHelper serviceHelper = new NAVPageServiceHelper(customerPageRef, “Customer”);

Using the Page Service Helper

The Page Service Helper then uses NAVFields so that you can do stuff like:

foreach (NAVPageFieldInfo fi in serviceHelper.Fields)
Console.WriteLine(fi.field + ” ” + fi.fieldType.Name);

The properties currently in the Service Helper are:

Fields is a NAVFields (a list of NAVFieldInfo derived classes)
PrimaryKeyFields is an array NAVFieldInfo classes (from Fields) which makes out the primary key of the record
GetFieldsType returns the type of the Field enumeration
GetObjectType returns the type of the records handles through this Service
ReadMultiple reads the records matching an array of filters (calls the ReadMultiple on the Service)
CreateFilter creates a filter spec based on a field and a criteria
Read reads a record based on a primary key (creates a filter spec for the primary key and calls ReadMultiple)
Update updates a record (calls the Update method on the Service)
Create creates a record (calls the Create method on the Service)
Delete deletes a record matching a key
ReRead reads an updated instance of a record (calls the Read method on the Service with the key fields)
IsUpdated checks whether the record is updated (calls the IsUpdated method on the Service)
GetFiltersFromView creates an array of filter specs based on a view (from GETVIEW in AL Code)

An example of how to read customer 10000 and print the name would be:

object cust = serviceHelper.Read(“10000”);
Console.WriteLine(serviceHelper.Fields[“Name”].GetValue(cust));

Note, that you find the Field – and on the field, you call GetValue and specify the record instance.

If you need to Display the name of all customers with location code yellow you would write

ArrayList filters = new ArrayList();
filters.Add(serviceHelper.CreateFilter(“Location_Code”, “Yellow”));
object[] customers = serviceHelper.ReadMultiple(filters);
foreach (object customer in customers)
Console.WriteLine(serviceHelper.Fields[“Name”].GetValue(customer));

Or you could create a Customer by writing

object newcust = System.Activator.CreateInstance(serviceHelper.GetObjectType());
serviceHelper.Fields[“Name”].SetValue(newcust, “Freddy Kristiansen”, DBNull.Value);
newcust = serviceHelper.Create(newcust);
Console.WriteLine(serviceHelper.Fields[“No”].GetValue(newcust));

As mentioned before, the Page Service Helper was primarily created for making Edit In Excel and other projects, where you are using loosely coupled Page Web Service Access.

For a lot of other usages, this is overkill and you should rather use Web References in Visual Studio and have a strongly typed contract with the Web Service.

You can download the projects and the small test program here.

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Dynamic references to NAV Page Web Services in C#

Posted on April 27, 2009 by freddykristiansen

Note: There is an updated post about Dynamic references to NAV Page Web Services here.

When creating the very first (never published) version of Edit In Excel, it was loosely coupled, meaning that I did not have any Web references in the project to the Customer Page, Vendor Page or other pages. I read the WSDL and used XPath to traverse the XML and build up structures and I was able to attach to any Page Web Service.

The code wasn’t nice, and I was afraid that I would confuse more people than necessary if I posted that source. So I decided to go with a version, where I had a Web References in VS for every page you can connect to Excel.

The caveat of this approach is that everytime you customize the Customer Page, you need to recompile your Edit In Excel solution – AND you need to do some work if you want to add additional pages. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could avoid this?

If you study the code in the Edit In Excel, you will find that the type-strong web references really aren’t used that much, the majority of the code uses the type of the service, the type of the field enumeration etc.

Last week I stumbled over a very interesting blog called crowsprogramming. A special thanks to the author for this post:

C# – Dynamically Invoke Web Service At Runtime

which in details shows how to ask the read the WSDL, build a service description and compile it into an assembly, and it basically consists of 3 methods:

/// <summary>
/// Builds an assembly from a web service description.
/// The assembly can be used to execute the web service methods.
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”webServiceUri”>Location of WSDL.</param>
/// <returns>A web service assembly.</returns>
public static Assembly BuildAssemblyFromWSDL(Uri webServiceUri)

/// <summary>
/// Builds the web service description importer, which allows us to generate a proxy class based on the
/// content of the WSDL described by the XmlTextReader.
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”xmlreader”>The WSDL content, described by XML.</param>
/// <returns>A ServiceDescriptionImporter that can be used to create a proxy class.</returns>
private static ServiceDescriptionImporter BuildServiceDescriptionImporter(XmlTextReader xmlreader)

/// <summary>
/// Compiles an assembly from the proxy class provided by the ServiceDescriptionImporter.
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”descriptionImporter”></param>
/// <returns>An assembly that can be used to execute the web service methods.</returns>
private static Assembly CompileAssembly(ServiceDescriptionImporter descriptionImporter)

When you call the first method with our NAV WebServices URL, it reads the WSDL, creates a CodeDom of the proxy classes, compiles the proxy and returns an assembly, which you can reflect over – all it takes is the following line of code:

// create an assembly from the web service description
Assembly webServiceAssembly = BuildAssemblyFromWSDL(
new Uri(“http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV/WS/CRONUS_International_Ltd/Page/Customer”));

Type weak

So, what can you really do with an Assembly in your hand…

You cannot use statements like:

if (customer.No == “10000”)

if the webservice isn’t added to the project. How should Visual Studio know that there is a No field in customer. So any Web References you add dynamically will only be there to reflect over and use via reflection, but you can do everything using reflection – it is just harder.

First of all – we can enumerate the public types in the assembly:

// Create Service Reference
Type[] types = webServiceAssembly.GetExportedTypes();
foreach (Type type in types)
Console.WriteLine(type.ToString());

running this, will output the following:

Customer_Service
Customer
Blocked
Copy_Sell_to_Addr_to_Qte_From
Application_Method
Reserve
Shipping_Advice
Customer_Filter
Customer_Fields

Which are the public types from an assembly, which is the proxy to a NAV Customer Page Webservice. Knowing that all pages follows the same pattern and that everything in Edit In Excel uses reflection over these classes anyway, it really became too compelling to rip out the Web Service References and make everything dynamic (that post will follow this one).

Working with reflection

I am not going to go into detail about how reflection works and what you can do with reflection, but I will show some examples of how to work with the dynamic assembly. First of all we want to create our service class:

Type serviceType = webServiceAssembly.GetType(“Customer_Service”);
object service = Activator.CreateInstance(serviceType);

if using static web references, this would be Customer_Service service = new Customer_Service();

Now we need to set the UseDefaultCredentials property to true:

PropertyInfo useDefaultCredentials = service.GetType().GetProperty(“UseDefaultCredentials”);
useDefaultCredentials.SetValue(service, (object)true, new object[] { });

in other words, get the info-class about the property based on the type, and call the setValue on the propertyinfo, specifying the object instance you want to set the value in, the value and an empty array, specifying that there are no parameters for this call.

Using static web references, this would be service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;

Next thing we want to do, is to call ReadMultiple and get all customers:

MethodInfo readMultiple = service.GetType().GetMethod(“ReadMultiple”);
object[] customers = (object[])readMultiple.Invoke(service, new object[] { null, null, 0 });

You see the picture – get the method info-class based on the type, and invoke the instance based method, specifying the instance and an object[] which contains the parameters you want to use.

In the static world this would be Customer[] customers = service.ReadMultiple(null, null, 0);

Now, we have an array of objects and the objects are of type Customer – but we don’t know about the customer type – only from reflection, so if we want to write the names of all customers we have to do something like:

Type customerType = webServiceAssembly.GetType(“Customer”);
PropertyInfo no = customerType.GetProperty(“No”);
PropertyInfo name = customerType.GetProperty(“Name”);
foreach (object customer in customers)
Console.WriteLine(no.GetValue(customer, new object[] { }) + ” ” + name.GetValue(customer, new object[] { }));

Which in a static implementation would be foreach(Customer customer in customers) Console.Writeline(customer.No + “ “ + customer.Name);

When to use dynamic Web References?

So, by now you got it – and yes, it is WAY easier to work with static Web References, inserted in the solution and using the strongly typed classes and methods, so when would you use dynamic Web References?

My answer to this is: Whenever you want to make something generic, where you can connect to different pages and/or where you don’t mind that the pages gets customized. In the scenario, where you have a fixed contract for requesting order information from a web service in NAV, there is absolutely no reason to use dynamic web references. In cases where you are connecting to a page based web reference where you have control over the page, it is easier (and probably safer due to type checking) to use the type strong web service access and maybe using LINQ with NAV Web Services from my last post.

But… – for something like Edit In Excel, dynamic Web References is a gift – and is really useful. I also think that it could be very useful with Bugsy’s Sharepoint sample – I need to investigate that…

Privileges

I was concerned whether stuff like this would require elevated privileges, but it turns out, that as long as the DLL you are creating / calling is going to run in the same context as your application, this doesn’t require anything. I tested this out running as non-administrator with UAC (Windows Vista User Access Control) turned on.

As usual, you can download the DynamicWebReference solution here.

The next thing I will do, is to extract some of the code from the Edit In Excel and create a set of classes, which makes working with dynamic web references easier. This will of course then be rolled back into the Edit In Excel R2.

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel R2 – Part 1 (out of 2)

Posted on April 13, 2009 by freddykristiansen

This post assumes that you have read the 4 step walkthrough of how to build the Edit In Excel demo from November 2008. You can find the parts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and the Bug Fix.

In this post I will talk about what is needed in order to be able to save an Excel spreadsheet on a local disc, edit it offline and then submit your changes later.

My first assumption was that this was just a few small changes, but I should learn more…

Goal

The success scenario is the one where a NAV user decides to take the customer table offline in Excel to do modifications. The Excel spreadsheet is saved to a local hard drive and edited while not connected to the network.

When the user reconnects to the network, he can submit his changes, which will be send to NAV through Web Services and validated according to business rules.

The location of NAVTemplate.vsto

Let’s just try to save the spreadsheet in our Documents folder and see what happens if we open the spreadsheet. Not surprisingly we get an error telling us that it was unable to locate NAVTemplate.vsto

An immediate solution is to save the spreadsheet next to the .vsto and then it seems to work better, but the spreadsheet is not attached to NAV anymore, we cannot save changes and reload crashes with an exception.

The .vsto file is our deployment manifest, which is our managed code extension to the spreadsheet and of course this is needed in order for the spreadsheet to work.

You can read more about the architecture of Document-Level Customizations here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zcfbd2sk.aspx

Looking at the ServerDocument interface,which we use in the NAVEditInExcel solution, it has a property called DeploymentManifestUri, which is the location of the .vsto file. Adding the following line to the NAVEditInExcel project

serverDoc.DeploymentManifestUrl = new Uri(System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), “NAVTemplate.vsto”));

will cause the document to be created with an absolute reference to the NAVTemplate.vsto, and this will solve the problem with the spreadsheet not being able to locate the .vsto. In fact if this is a network location, it should even be possible to send the Excel spreadsheet to somebody else who should be able to modify the document and post the changes.

When doing this I decided to make another change in the NAVEditInExcel project. As you know it creates a temporary template in the same location as the DLL and the VSTO – and then it deletes it again. This is really not the preferred location of temporary files – we should create temporary files in the Temp folder so we change the line setting the template name to:

string template = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetTempPath(), page + “.xltx”);

since we don’t need to have the .xltx next to the .vsto anymore.

What do we need to save?

Members of the Sheet1 class marked with [Cached] will be saved together with the document – we know that from the way we transfer the page name and the current view to the spreadsheet. Thinking about it, the only things we need to save together with the document is the dataTable (which at any time contains the changes made by the user) and the objects collection (which are the objects returned from the Web Service).

The DataTable class implements IXmlSerializable and the objects collection is (as we know) an array of objects returned from a web Service provider and since these objects where send over the wire from a Web Service they of course also implements IXmlSerializable.

The fields collection cannot be saved, since the NAVFieldInfo class uses the PropertyInfo class, which cannot be serialized. The Service connection of course cannot be serialized either – nor can the datalist class – as the matter of fact, the datalist class shouldn’t be a member at all, it should be moved to the AddDataToExcel method as a local variable.

Problem now is, that if we just mark the dataTable and objects members with [Cached] we need to initialize them in the NAVEditInExcel project and there is no way we can instantiate the objects collection at that time with the right type.

A little more on cached data objects in Office documents

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178808(VS.80).aspx

and then how to programmatically add members to the cached objects

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/48b7eyf3(VS.80).aspx

using this knowledge gives us the following two lines, we want to add after we have instantiated the dataTable and the objects array.

// Add dataTable and objects to the Caching collection
this.StartCaching(“dataTable”);
this.StartCaching(“objects”);

Now we just need to determine that the spreadsheet was loaded from a file (and not started from NAV) and then act differently.

Refactoring some code

We need to do a little refactoring of code in order to make things work. In the existing solution the PopulateFieldsCollection method creates the fields collection, but it also creates an empty dataTable class. Since we now store the dataTable class and not the fields collection we need as the first thing in the new spreadsheet to create the fields collection (a lot of things is depending on this). This is the new PopulateFieldsCollection (and AddField):

/// <summary>
/// Populate Fields Collection with NAVFieldInfo for all properties in the record
/// Should works with any NAV 2009 Page exposed as WebService
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”objType”>Type of Object (typeof(Customer), typeof(Vendor), …)</param>
/// <param name=”fieldsType”>Type of the Enum holding the property names</param>
private void PopulateFieldsCollection(Type objType, Type fieldsType)
{
this.fields = new List<NAVFieldInfo>();

// Key property is not part of the Enum
// Add it manually as the first field
AddField(“Key”, objType);

// Run through the enum and add all fields
foreach (string field in Enum.GetNames(fieldsType))
{
AddField(field, objType);
}
}

/// <summary>
/// Create a NAVFieldInfo for a field
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”field”>Field name</param>
/// <param name=”objType”>Type of Object in which the field is (typeof(Customer), typeof(Vendor), …)</param>
private void AddField(string field, Type objType)
{
field = NAVFilterHelper.VSName(field);
PropertyInfo pi = objType.GetProperty(field, System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
if (pi != null)
{
NAVFieldInfo nfi = NAVFieldInfo.CreateNAVFieldInfo(field, pi, objType.Namespace);
if (nfi != null)
{
// If we encounter unknown Field Types, they are just ignored
this.fields.Add(nfi);
}
}
}

The Load function in the old spreadsheet does a number of things. It populates the Fields collection, loads the data, populates the dataTable and add the dataTable to the spreadsheet.

We will remove and create one function called LoadDataTable, which will create a dataTable (based on the fields collection), load the data from Web Services and populate the dataTable.

/// <summary>
/// Load Records from NAV via Web Services
/// </summary>
private void LoadDataTable()
{
// Create Data Table object based on fields collection
this.dataTable = new DataTable(this.page);
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
this.dataTable.Columns.Add(new DataColumn(nfi.field, nfi.fieldType));
}

SetFilters(this.view);
this.objects = this.service.ReadMultiple();
// Populate dataTable with data
foreach (object obj in this.objects)
{
DataRow dataRow = this.dataTable.NewRow();
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
dataRow[nfi.field] = nfi.GetValue(obj);
}
this.dataTable.Rows.Add(dataRow);
}
this.dataTable.AcceptChanges();
}

As you can see, this is pieces of the PopulateFieldsCollection, Load and PopulateDataTable functions – as the matter of fact, you can delete the PopulateDataTable function as well. BTW the AcceptChanges call was moved from AddDataToExcel it needs to be together with the code populating the dataTable.

Right now my startup code in my spreadsheet has changed to

if (this.service != null)
{
this.service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;

// Create Fields collection
this.PopulateFieldsCollection(this.service.GetObjectType(), this.service.GetFieldsType());

Application.ScreenUpdating = false;

bool loadData = this.ListObjects.Count == 0;
if (!loadData)
{
MessageBox.Show(“Spreadsheet loaded from disc”);
}
if (loadData)
{
// Load Data into dataTable from Web Services
this.LoadDataTable();
// Add dataTable to Excel Spreadsheet
this.AddDataTableToExcel();

// Add dataTable and objects to the Caching collection
this.StartCaching(“dataTable”);
this.StartCaching(“objects”);
}

Application.ScreenUpdating = true;
}

from just invoking Load() before.

So we populate the fields collection and then we check whether or not there is a ListObject in the document (remember the Controls collection was empty). If this is the case we must do something (for now we just display a messagebox).

If we are called from NAV (loadData becomes true) we will load the data and call AddDataTableToExcel (renamed from AddDataToExcel) and that should work.

If we try to compile now, we will see that the Reload() method uses Load() as well. We need to change Reload to

/// <summary>
/// Reload data from NAV (delete old dataTable, and load new data)
/// </summary>
internal void Reload()
{
Application.ScreenUpdating = false;

// Remove List Object
if (this.dataTable != null)
this.Controls.RemoveAt(0);
else
this.ListObjects[1].Delete();

// Load Data into dataTable from Web Services
this.LoadDataTable();
// Add dataTable to Excel Spreadsheet
this.AddDataTableToExcel();

// If this reload was in fact a reattach of the spreadsheet, start caching dataTable and objects again
if (!this.IsCached(“dataTable”))
{
// Add dataTable and objects to the Caching collection
this.StartCaching(“dataTable”);
this.StartCaching(“objects”);
}

Application.ScreenUpdating = true;
}

Note that we remove the old listobject in two different ways based on whether or not dataTable is set. dataTable is null if the spreadsheet has been detached from NAV – I will touch more upon that later. This is also the reason why we restart Caching the dataTable and objects if in fact this was a reattach.

The solution should work as before now – the only major difference is, that if you save the spreadsheet on the disc and try to load it again it should not give an exception telling you, that you cannot overlap a table with another table, instead it should give you something like:

This is of course not the final solution, but it shows us that we are on the right track.

Restoring the “State” of the spreadsheet

To make a long story short, the lines we need in order to restore the managed list object are:

// Remove Non-VSTO List Object
this.ListObjects[1].Delete();
// Create a new VSTO ListObject – data bound
this.AddDataTableToExcel();

Meaning that we remove the unmanaged ListObject and we add the managed ListObject to Excel, seems pretty easy. But what if the document is saved on disc and you add a field to the Customer Page (+ update your web reference and recompile your NAVTemplate) then the managed extension assembly doesn’t match the saved spreadsheet anymore and the above logic wouldn’t work.

In many cases we could just say that we don’t care – but given the ability to save spreadsheets that are connected to Web Services and reload data adds another dimension to the entire Excel thing. You can have spreadsheets that contain a lot of other things than your dataTable and you might not be pleased with the fact that you loose the NAV Web Service connection if this happens.

I decided to build in a way of determining this and give the user a couple of options:

// If the spreadsheet was detached already – just ignore
if (this.IsCached(“dataTable”))
{
// We have loaded a saved spreadsheet with data
// Check that the VSTO assembly (fields) matches the spreadsheet
bool fieldsOK = this.dataTable.Columns.Count == this.fields.Count;
if (fieldsOK)
{
for (int i = 0; i < this.fields.Count; i++)
if (this.dataTable.Columns[i].Caption != this.fields[i].field)
fieldsOK = false;
}
if (!fieldsOK)
{
// Schema mismatch – cannot link back to NAV
switch (MessageBox.Show(“Customer Card definition has changed since this spreadsheet was save. Do you want to re-establish link, reload data and loose changes?”, “Error”, MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel))
{
case DialogResult.Cancel:
// Quit
Application.Quit();
break;
case DialogResult.Yes:
// Remove Non-VSTO List Object
this.ListObjects[1].Delete();
// Signal reload data and reestablish link
loadData = true;
                this.StopCaching(“dataTable”);
this.StopCaching(“objects”);
                break;
case DialogResult.No:
// Detach spreadsheet from NAV
              this.dataTable = null;
              this.objects = null;
              this.StopCaching(“dataTable”);
              this.StopCaching(“objects”);
                break;
}

}
else
{
// Remove Non-VSTO List Object
this.ListObjects[1].Delete();
// Create a new VSTO ListObject – data bound
this.AddDataTableToExcel();
}
}

3 options – Cancel quits the spreadsheet open command and no harm has been done, Yes removes the old table and sets the loadData to true (meaning that the spreadsheet will reload data as if it was opened from NAV) and No will detatch the spreadsheet from NAV (setting the dataTable to null and stop caching dataTable and objects). Note that if you ever press Reload it will re-attach the spreadsheet and load data from NAV again (the reason for checking whether the dataTable was null in Reload).

Yes or No will of course not touch the original spreadsheet and you can always save in a new name.

BTW – we need one simple check in Save() as well

/// <summary>
/// Save Changes to NAV via Web Service
/// </summary>
internal void Save()
{
if (this.dataTable == null)
{
MessageBox.Show(“Spreadsheet was detached from NAV, cannot perform Save!”);
}
else if (DoSave())
{
Reload();
}
}

The only extra tihing you need is to add the following line right before the return statement in DoSave():

this.dataTable.AcceptChanges();

Without this line you cannot edit the data, save changes to NAV, edit more data and then save locally.

Done

We are done – we now have a template you can use for modifying NAV data. You can save the spreadsheet locally and modify it while you are offline and later, when you come back online you can push your changes to NAV and this is when validation happens.

As usual you can download the project here http://www.freddy.dk/NAVTemplateR2.zip – there are no changes to what’s needed in NAV, so you should use the objects from the original Edit In Excel walkthrough inside C/AL.

BTW. If you decide to use the source, you probably need to right-click the Web References and invoke Update Web Reference to make sure that the Web Reference matches your Customer, Item and Vendor Card Pages.

Part 2?

So why is this a part 1 out of 2 you might ask yourself right now?

Reason is that I want to create a better conflict resolution in the spreadsheet. With the solution we have build now, any change to a record by anybody will cause you to loose your changes in Excel. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to determine that we only changed the location code in Excel, so just because somebody changed the credit limit on a couple of customers, we should still be able to re-apply our changes without having to type them in again.

This is what R2 step 2 is all about – a better conflict resolution mechanism.

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel – bug fix and R2

Posted on April 12, 2009 by freddykristiansen

If you haven’t read the 4 step walkthrough of how to Edit In Excel from Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you should do so here this post is a follow up to the original posts.

I have received a number of suggestions to what you could do with the Edit In Excel and a single bug. In this post I will fix the bug and I will explain what R2 is all about.

The Bug

The bug description is, that if you take my binaries and use them on a machine without regional settings = US – you will get an exception (Thanks Waldo).

Whether this is my bug or whether Excel behaves strange I will leave to the reader, but fact is, that if I have created a VSTO template for Excel on a machine with regional settings = US – then you cannot create a spreadsheet based on that template from code if your computer is not setup the same way.

The easiest fix I found to this problem (and now somebody might say that I am a hacker) is to temporarily set the current culture to en-US while opening the spreadsheet, then everything seems to work.

So, change this line:

excelApp.Workbooks.Add(template);

// Set the current culture to en-US when adding the template to avoid an exception if running on a non-US computer
System.Globalization.CultureInfo orgCulture = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(“en-US”);

// Create a new spreadsheet based on the new template
excelApp.Workbooks.Add(template);

// Restore culture in current thread
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = orgCulture;

I have updated the original binaries with this fix and they can be downloaded from http://www.freddy.dk/NAVTemplate_Final.zip

R2

One suggestion I have received a number of times is whether it is possible to save the spreadsheet with customers and be able to have a local spreadsheet connected to your NAV that you can load and work with.

So – I set out to fix this – shouldn’t be a biggy (I thought), but it turned out that there are a number of things you need to take into consideration. It isn’t a total rewrite, but it is a pretty significant change, so I decided that it was time for Edit In Excel R2.

Stay tuned – Edit In Excel R2 coming up in a few days.

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel – Part 4 (out of 4)

Posted on November 8, 2008 by freddykristiansen

If you haven’t read part 3, part 2 (and part 1), you should do so before continuing here.

We have seen how to put code inside Excel, using VSTO and connect to NAV 2009 Web Services. We have seen how to add this to a table inside Excel and how to write data back to NAV through Web Services. We can delete, add and modify records in Excel and we can even do so with both Customers, Vendors and Items. We have added support for NAV filters, error handling and the only thing we are missing to have a very good experience is integrating the whole thing into NAV.

So we better do that now!

Disclaimer

Most of the people reading this are probably superior AL coders compared to me. I really only started coding in AL last year and I am still struggling to understand how things works. So, if I do something stupid in AL – just tell me in a comment how to do it smarter – thanks.

Actions in NAV 2009

What we want to do is

Add an action to the menu, which launches Excel, reads the same data as we have in the list place and allows the user to modify that data.

But we need to start in a different area – we need a COM object, which our action can invoke.

Creating a COM object

First of all we will create a COM object, which contains one function.

public void EditInExcel(string page, string view)

I do think there are a number of tutorials that explains how to do this, so I will run over the steps very quickly.

In the same solution as the NAVTemplate, create a new project – type Class Library and name the project NAVEditInExcel
Rename class1.cs to NAVEditInExcel.cs – and say Yes to the question whether you want to rename the class as well.
Select Properties on the project (not the solution)
1. On the Build tab, set the output path to ..NAVTemplatebinDebug in order to share the output path the the Excel Spreadsheet
2. On the Build events tab, we need to register the COM object to make it visible to NAV. Add the following Post Build Event: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\regasm NAVEditInExcel.dll /codebase /tlb
3. On the Signing tab, check the Sign the Assembly checkbox and select New key in the combo box, name the key and protect it with a password if you fancy.
Open the AssemblyInfo.cs (under Properties in the Solution Explorer)
1. Add using system; to the using statements
2. Add [assembly: CLSCompliant(true)] under the line with [assembly: ComVisible(false)].
Open the source for the NavEditInExcel.cs
1. Add using System.Runtime.InteropServices; to the using statements
2. Create an Interface and change the class to be:

[ComVisible(true)]
[Guid(“A2C51FC8-671E-4135-AD27-48EDC491E76E”), InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsDual)]
public interface INAVEditInExcel
{
void EditInExcel(string page, string view);
}

[ComVisible(true)]
[Guid(“233E0C7F-2276-4142-929C-D6BA8725D7B4”), ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None)]
public class NAVEditInExcel : INAVEditInExcel
{
public void EditInExcel(string page, string view)
{

// Code goes here…
}
}

Now you should be able to build the COM object and see it inside NAV when adding a variable of type automation.

Adding the Action in NAV

Open up the Classic Client and design the Customer List Place.

Insert an Action on the Customer List Place called Edit In Excel and edit the code for that (btw. the Image Name for the Excel icon is Excel)

In the code for that Action – create a local variable called NAVEditInExcel of type Automation and select the NAVEditInExcel.NAVEditInExcel COM object to use and add the following code:

CREATE(NAVEditInExcel, TRUE, TRUE);
NAVEditInExcel.EditInExcel(TABLENAME, GETVIEW(TRUE));

That’s it on the NAV side, but of course we didn’t make all the code necessary in the COM object yet.

If you try to launch the Action you will be met by the security dialog

Which you of course want to hit always allow to – else you will get this dialog every time you say Edit In Excel.

BTW – If you hit Never allow – you will never be allowed to Edit in Excel – not until you have deleted your PersonalizationStore.xml at least.

Completing the COM object

Having that hooked up we really just need to launch that damn spreadsheet with the right parameters.

We need to add 3 .NET references to the COM object:

System.Windows.Forms
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.v9.0

and the following 3 using statements:

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Reflection;

and last but not least, add the following EditInExcel method:

public void EditInExcel(string page, string view)
{
try
{
// Copy the original template to a new template using the page name as name!
string originalTemplate = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), “NAVTemplate.xltx”);
if (!System.IO.File.Exists(originalTemplate))
{
MessageBox.Show(string.Format(“The template: ‘{0}’ cannot be found!”, originalTemplate), “Error”, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
return;
}
string template = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), page + “.xltx”);
while (System.IO.File.Exists(template))
{
try
{
System.IO.File.Delete(template);
}
catch (System.IO.IOException)
{
if (MessageBox.Show(string.Format(“The template: ‘{0}’ is locked, cannot open spreadsheet”, template), “Error”, MessageBoxButtons.RetryCancel, MessageBoxIcon.Error) != DialogResult.Retry)
{
return;
}
}
}
System.IO.File.Copy(originalTemplate, template);

// Open the new template and set parameters
ServerDocument serverDoc = new ServerDocument(template);
CachedDataHostItem host = serverDoc.CachedData.HostItems[0];
host.CachedData[“page”].SerializeDataInstance(page);
host.CachedData[“view”].SerializeDataInstance(view);
serverDoc.Save();
serverDoc.Close();

// Create a new spreadsheet based on the new template
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.ApplicationClass excelApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.ApplicationClass();
excelApp.Visible = true;
excelApp.Workbooks.Add(template);

// Erase template
System.IO.File.Delete(template);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(e.Message, “Critical error”, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
}
}

This method really does 4 things:

Copy the NAVTemplate.xltx to a new template called Customer.xltx (that is if the page name is customer) which is a temporary template
Open the template as a ServerDocument and set the parameters
Ask Excel to create a new spreadsheet based on this template
Erase the template

That was easy!

Oh – there is one things I forgot to say, you need to specify in the Excel Spreadsheet that the page and view variables are cached data (meaning their value are saved with Excel) – this is done by adding an attribute to the variables:

[Cached]
public string page;

[Cached]
public string view;

Having done this, you can open the spreadsheet as a Serverdocument, get and set the value of these parameters and save the document again, pretty sweet way of communicating parameters to Excel or Word – and this will definitely come in handy later.

Adding the action other pages

Having verified that we can edit customers in Excel we can now add the same action as above to the Vendor and the Item List Places.

You can either follow the same steps as above – or you can copy the action and paste it on the other List Places.

Note that you cannot build the Visual Studio solution while you have NAV 2009 open. When NAV loads the COM object, it keeps a reference to it until you close NAV.

Last but not least – this should work from the classic client as well – if you want to add the functionality there – I haven’t tried it.

That’s it folks

That completes the Edit In Excel in Part 1 through 4

As always, there is absolutely no warranty that this code works for the purpose you need it to, but these posts show how to do some things and feel free to use pieces of this or use it as a base to build your own solution using Excel – the code is free – a referral to my blog is always a good way of acknowledgement.

I hope you can make it work, that it is useful and you can download the final solution here: http://www.freddy.dk/NAVTemplate_Final.zip

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel – Part 3 (out of 4)

Posted on November 8, 2008 by freddykristiansen

If you haven’t read part 2 (and part 1), you should do so before continuing here.

In Part 1 and 2, we have seen how easy it is to add a Web Service Reference inside Excel, and use it to get Data. In Part 2 we even had the ability to modify data and send this back to NAV. The original intend was that part 3 would be all about integrating this to NAV on the Client side and part 4 would be to make this loosely coupled – but I have changed my mind on this.

Part 3 will remove the direct dependency on the Customer Web Service from most of the code – and thus allowing us to modify both Customer, Vendor or Item data in Excel with very few tweaks to the code. Also I will add support for parsing a filter string and applying this to the list. I will also add error handling of the save process.

Part 4 will then be to add the Action in NAV and hook that up to set the parameters in Excel.

I will still post the source of the original loosely coupled XMLHTTP based Edit In Excel, but I will not use it for anything.

To prepare ourselves for part 4 we need the following variables:

/// <summary>
/// Page which is going to be used for Edit In Excel
/// Customer, Vendor, Item, etc…
/// The card page for this record needs to be exposed as webservice with that name
/// </summary>
string page;

/// <summary>
/// The filters to apply (format: GETVIEW(TRUE))
/// Sample: “SORTING(No.) WHERE(Balance (LCY)=FILTER(>10,000))”
/// </summary>
string view;

These are the parameters, which we in part 4 will transfer values to Excel in – for now we will build the Spreadsheet to use those.

BTW – I changed the Project name from CustomerTemplate to NAVTemplate (actually I created a new project and copied over some of the files and changed the namespace).

Then I have moved the service connection initialization away from Load – and into Sheet_Startup, the new Sheet1_Startup code looks like this

private void Sheet1_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
switch (this.page)
{
case “Customer”:
this.service = new CustomerRef.Customer_Service();
break;
case “Vendor”:
this.service = new VendorRef.Vendor_Service();
break;
case “Item”:
this.service = new ItemRef.Item_Service();
break;
default:
MessageBox.Show(string.Format(“Page {0} is not setup for Edit In Excel. Please contact your system administrator”, this.page), “Microsoft Dynamics NAV”, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
break;
}
if (this.service != null)
{
this.service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
Load();
}
}

and I have added references to all 3 services.

This is the only place I have a switch on the page – the rest of the code is made to work with all – but wait… – how is that possible?

Service Connection classes code generated from Visual Studio doesn’t implement any common interface and we cannot change the code generated proxy classes (or rather – we don’t want to). We can, however, add something to the existing service. Looking at the code generated proxy class we will notice that the Customer_Service class is defined as a partial class – meaning that we can actually write another part of the class just by creating a new class (with the keyword partial)

Looking through my code I really need the Customer_Service to implement an interface like this:

public interface INAVService
{
bool UseDefaultCredentials {get; set; }
System.Net.ICredentials Credentials {get; set; }

object[] ReadMultiple();
void Update(object obj);
void Create(object obj);
bool Delete(string key);

Type GetFieldsType();
Type GetObjectType();

void ClearFilters();
void AddFilter(string field, string criteria);
}

Some of these methods are already implemented by all Service Proxy classes and I use this to allow my code to look at the Service Connection via this interface only and the service variable I have in the sheet is actually type INAVService, flip side of this idea is, that for every new Page I want to add – I need to create a class like this:

public partial class Customer_Service : INAVService
{
List<Customer_Filter> filters;

#region INAVService Members

public object[] ReadMultiple()
{
return this.ReadMultiple(this.filters.ToArray(), null, 0);
}

public void Update(object obj)
{
Customer customer = (Customer)obj;
this.Update(ref customer);
}

public void Create(object obj)
{
Customer customer = (Customer)obj;
this.Create(ref customer);
}

public Type GetObjectType()
{
return typeof(Customer);
}

public Type GetFieldsType()
{
return typeof(Customer_Fields);
}

public void ClearFilters()
{
this.filters = new List<Customer_Filter>();
}

public void AddFilter(string field, string criteria)
{
Customer_Filter filter = new Customer_Filter();
filter.Field = (Customer_Fields)Enum.Parse(typeof(Customer_Fields), field, true);
filter.Criteria = criteria;
this.filters.Add(filter);
}

#endregion
}

Not really nice – but it beats having a series of switch statements scattered around in the source files.

So, whenever we want to add a record object type, which we want to be able to Edit In Excel – we add a source file like this (search and replace Customer with <newtype>), we add an extra outcome in the switch statement above and we expose the page to Web Services in NAV 2009.

BTW – In my solution, I have added the classes to the solution in a folder called Services.

Applying Filters and Load

The Load method now looks like this:

/// <summary>
/// Load Records from NAV via Web Services
/// </summary>
private void Load()
{
PopulateFieldsCollection(this.service.GetObjectType(), this.service.GetFieldsType());
SetFilters(this.view);
this.objects = this.service.ReadMultiple();
PopulateDataTable();
AddDataToExcel();
}

Note that we ask the Service connection class for the Object Type, the Fields Enum Type and we call the ReadMultiple on the Service Connection (all through the interface we just implemented).

After generating fields collection and the DataTable we call SetFilters – which in effect just parses the view variable (sample: “SORTING(No.) WHERE(Balance (LCY)=FILTER(>10,000))” – without the quotes) and calls AddFilter a number of times (in the sample only once) on the Service Connection Interface.

I added a NAVFilterHelper static class with 3 static helper methods – GetBlock, WSName and VSName.

GetBlock parses the string for a block (a keyword followed by a parentheses with stuff in it) – SORTING(No.) is one and the WHERE clause is another. The FILTER clause is another block inside the WHERE block.

WSName takes a name like “Balance (LCY)” and puts it through name mangling to get the Visual Studio generated identifier name (this is the name used in Enum – Balance_LCY)

VSName takes the enum identifier and removes special characters to get the Property name of the record object (there are no special characters in Balance_LCY)

Confused? – well look at this:

test &&//(())==??++–**test – is a perfectly good (maybe stupid) field name in NAV

test__x0026__x0026___x003D__x003D__x003F__x003F__x002B__x002B___x002A__x002A_test is the same identifier in the xx_Fields enum (from the WSDL)

test___test is the same identifier as property in Visual Studio (the code generated proxy class)

and yes – you can generate fields, which will cause Web Services to fail. In fact, CTP4 (the US version) has an Option field in Customer and Vendor (Check Seperator), where the options causes Customer and Vendor to fail when exposed to Web Services. This special case is fixed for RTM – and the WSName in my sample contains the same name mangling as NAV 2009 RTM, but you can still create field names, which will end up having identical names in VS – and then your WebService proxy won’t work.

WSName and VSName works for my usage – they might not work for all purposes.

There is really nothing fancy about the SetFilters code, but it works for the purpose:

/// <summary>
/// Parse the view and apply these filters to the Service Connection
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”view”>View to parse (from AL: GETVIEW(TRUE))</param>
private void SetFilters(string view)
{
this.service.ClearFilters();
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(view))
return;
string sorting = NAVFilterHelper.GetBlock(“SORTING”, ref view);
string where = NAVFilterHelper.GetBlock(“WHERE”, ref view);
do
{
int e = where.IndexOf(“=FILTER”);
if (e < 0)
break;
string field = NAVFilterHelper.WSName(where.Substring(0, e));
string criteria = NAVFilterHelper.GetBlock(“FILTER”, ref where);
this.service.AddFilter(field, criteria);

if (where.StartsWith(“,”))
where.Remove(0, 1);
}
while (true);
}

Yes, yes – as you of course immediately spotted – this code doesn’t work if you have a field with =FILTER in the field name – so don’t!

The PopulateDataTable and AddDataToExcel methods haven’t changed.

Save

One thing we didn’t get done in part 2 was error handling. If anybody tried to modify a Location Code to an illegal Location Code and save it back to Excel – you will have noticed that Excel just ignored your request.

Reason for this is, that Excel swallows the Exception, and just ignores it.

So – I have changed the Save() method to:

/// <summary>
/// Save Changes to NAV via Web Service
/// </summary>
internal void Save()
{
if (DoSave())
{
Reload();
}
}

and then created the DoSave() – with most of the content from Save() – but refactored inside one loop with error handling (Abort, Retry, Ignore).

/// <summary>
/// Delete, Add and Update Records
/// </summary>
internal bool DoSave()
{
// Run through records marked for delete, create or modify
DataView dv = new DataView(this.dataTable, “”, “”, DataViewRowState.Deleted | DataViewRowState.Added | DataViewRowState.ModifiedCurrent);
foreach (DataRowView drv in dv)
{
bool retry;
do
{
retry = false;
try
{
if (drv.Row.RowState == DataRowState.Deleted)
{
object obj = GetRecordObject((string)drv[0]);
if (obj != null)
{
if (!service.Delete((string)drv[0]))
{
throw new Exception(string.Format(“Unable to delete record”));
}
}
}
else if (drv.Row.RowState == DataRowState.Added)
{
object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(this.service.GetObjectType());
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
if (nfi.field != “Key”)
{
nfi.SetValue(obj, drv.Row[nfi.field]);
}
}
this.service.Create(obj);
}
else
{
object obj = GetRecordObject((string)drv[0]);
if (obj != null)
{
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
if (nfi.field != “Key”)
{
nfi.SetValue(obj, drv[nfi.field]);
}
}
this.service.Update(obj);
}
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
DialogResult reply = MessageBox.Show(string.Format(“{0} {1} {2}nn{3}”, this.dataTable.TableName, this.dataTable.Columns[1].Caption, drv[1].ToString(), e.Message), “Microsoft Dynamics NAV”, MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
if (reply == DialogResult.Abort)
return false;
if (reply == DialogResult.Retry)
retry = true;
}
} while (retry);
}
return true;
}

oh yes, and beside that – you can see that I now use the methods on the Service Connection Interface directly and I do not use the type safe references to Customer – but instead just object. A couple of comments:

The DataView is the only way (I know of) that we can see which records have been deleted in the DataTable.

The Line

object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(this.service.GetObjectType());

does the same as using

object obj = new CustomerRef.Customer();

if the object type of the Service Connection is Customer.

So if you change the location code on a customer to something stupid you now get this error:

Of course it doesn’t make much sense to Retry this one. Abort aborts the save – and doesn’t reload. Ignore continues the Save and ends up reloading and you loose the changes, we couldn’t save. Note that Abort is a little strange – it cannot abort the changes that has happened up until you abort – and since it doesn’t reload, it leaves the spreadsheet in a bad state.

Maybe we should just remove the abort option – it just seems like a bad thing only to be able to retry or press ignore on every single record. If I come up with a better way of handling Abort, I will post that.

Can’t wait for part 4?

Part 4 is where we integrate this into NAV and create Actions to call out to open this Excel Spreadsheet on the Client and that includes changes in NAV, a Client Side COM object and a mechanism to transfer parameters to an Excel spreadsheet – stay tuned.

In my original Edit In Excel sample, I use XMLHTTP to retrieve page information and look through that – I will still post the original Edit In Excel source code with part 4 – but note, that there are a LOT of pitfalls in that – and, it doesn’t support Adding records or deleting records, and I have stopped working on that code, even though the need for using XMLHTTP might still be relevant.

The safer way is to use the sample solutions posted with this walk through.

BTW – the NAVTemplate solution can be downloaded here: http://www.freddy.dk/NAVTemplate.zip

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel – Part 2 (out of 4)

Posted on November 7, 2008 by freddykristiansen

If you haven’t read Part 1, you should do so before continuing here.

In Part 1 we saw how easy it is to white .net code inside Excel, and get it executed based on an event in Excel, and how easy it is to fill values into cells. But in order to make this really useful we need to go a different way around.

First of all, we need to know more about the record we are working with. We could of course hard code everything – but that is not the preferred way to go. It needs to be flexible.

When referencing the Customer Page in Visual Studio, Visual Studio creates a proxy class (a wrapper for the Customer).

This Proxy class contains members for all fields on the Page and properties to access them, like:

public partial class Customer
{
private string keyField;
private string noField;
private string nameField;
… etc …

public string Key
{
get { return this.keyField; }
set { this.keyField = value; }
}

public string No
{
get { return this.noField; }
set { this.noField = value; }
}

public string Name
{
get { return this.nameField; }
set { this.nameField = value; }
}

… etc …
}

Meaning that if we have a variable of type Customer, we can get the value of the fields by accessing cust.Name etc., as we saw in part 1. There is no collection of fields, field types and getters/setters we can call – all we have is a class with a number of properties and an Enum with all the field names.

So, in order to be able to build a list of fields, look at their types and get their values without having to hard code everything, we need to use reflection.

Setting up definitions

I wont go into details about reflection here – but basically we need a method like this:

// Key property is not part of the Enum
// Add it manually as the first field
AddField(“Key”, objType);

// Run through the enum and add all fields
foreach (string field in Enum.GetNames(fieldsType))
{
AddField(field, objType);
}
}

This method enumerates all field names in the fieldsType Enum and call AddField for every field in the record object.

AddField then looks like this:

/// <summary>
/// Add a Column to the DataTable
/// And create a corresponding NAVFieldInfo
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”field”>Field name</param>
/// <param name=”objType”>Type of Object in which the field is (typeof(Customer), typeof(Vendor), …)</param>
private void AddField(string field, Type objType)
{
PropertyInfo pi = objType.GetProperty(field, System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
NAVFieldInfo nfi = NAVFieldInfo.CreateNAVFieldInfo(field, pi, objType.Namespace);
// If we encounter unknown Field Types, they are just ignored
if (nfi != null)
{
this.fields.Add(nfi);
this.dataTable.Columns.Add(new DataColumn(field, nfi.fieldType));
}
}

It uses reflection to get the information about the property on the record object (the PropertyInfo).

After calling the PopulateFIeldsCollection, we will have a collection of fields in the this.fields variable and we will have the corresponding columns in the this.dataTable variable, all created with the right names and types on the columns.

For every different field type there is a different class which all derives from NAVFieldInfo. This class holds the field name, the field type and the PropertyInfo class (which is used for invoking the getter and setter on the record object later).

The static CreateNAVFieldInfo which is called from AddField then creates the right NAVFieldInfo class as shown below:

/// <summary>
/// Create a NAVFieldInfo object for a specific field
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”field”>Name of the property</param>
/// <param name=”pi”>PropertyInfo for the property on the record object</param>
/// <param name=”ns”>Namespace for the record object (namespace for the added WebServices proxy class)</param>
/// <returns>NAVFieldInfo or null if the type isn’t supported</returns>
internal static NAVFieldInfo CreateNAVFieldInfo(string field, System.Reflection.PropertyInfo pi, string ns)
{
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(string))
{
// String Property – is it the KeyField
if (field == “Key”)
return new KeyFieldInfo(field, pi);
else
return new StringFieldInfo(field, pi);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(decimal))
{
// Decimal Property
return new DecimalFieldInfo(field, pi);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(int))
{
// Integer Property
return new IntFieldInfo(field, pi);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(bool))
{
// Boolean Property
return new BooleanFieldInfo(field, pi);
}
if (pi.PropertyType == typeof(DateTime))
{
// DateTime Property
return new DateTimeFieldInfo(field, pi);
}
if (pi.PropertyType.Namespace == ns)
{
// Other Property Types, in the same namespace as the object
// These are enum’s – set up restrictions on OptionFields
return new OptionFieldInfo(field, pi, Enum.GetNames(pi.PropertyType));
}
// Unsupported – ignore
return null;
}

Meaning that there are classes for KeyFieldInfo, StringFieldInfo, DecimalFieldInfo, IntFieldInfo, BooleanFieldInfo, DateTimeFieldInfo and OptionFieldInfo.

On these classes we have 3 virtual methods:

Get the value of the property from a Record Object (GetValue)
Set the value of the property on the Record Object (SetValue)
Format the Excel column used to show this type (AdjustColumn)

Example of the AdjustColumn on the StringFieldInfo is:

/// <summary>
/// Adjust formatting and properties of an Excel column
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”column”>Excel Range of cells to set formatting on</param>
internal override void AdjustColumn(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range column)
{
column.EntireColumn.NumberFormat = “@”;
column.EntireColumn.HorizontalAlignment = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Constants.xlLeft;
column.EntireColumn.AutoFit();
}

Which will set the format, the horizontal alignment and make the column with adjust to the size of the content.

The GetValue is defined as

/// <summary>
/// Get the value from the record object by calling the property getter on the object
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”obj”>The record object</param>
/// <returns>The value in the type specified in fieldType</returns>
internal virtual object GetValue(object obj)
{
return this.pi.GetValue(obj, null);
}

in the base class – and is only overwritten in the BooleanFieldInfo class. The SetValue is defined in the base class is:

/// <summary>
/// Set the value to the record object by calling the property setter on the object
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”obj”>The record object</param>
/// <param name=”value”>The new value for the field</param>
internal virtual void SetValue(object obj, object value)
{
if (value == DBNull.Value)
{
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.pi.GetValue(obj, null) as string))
{
this.pi.SetValue(obj, “”, null);
}
}
else
{
this.pi.SetValue(obj, value, null);
}
}

has is overwritten in OptionFieldInfo and BooleanFieldInfo.

The reason for overwriting these functions is, that the property type in the Record Object is different from the type we set in the DataTable. For Boolean – we want to have a Yes/No option in Excel – but the type in the Record Object is a Boolean – not a string.

For Option Fields – the Property Type of the Record Object is an Enumeration defined in the same namespace as the Record Object and the OptionFieldInfo class uses reflection to enumerate the enumeration names.

Loading the data

After having information about all fields ready on our fingertips and the DataTable initialized and ready to recieve data – we just need to read the data and add it to the datatable (and then of course add the datatable to the Spreadsheet).

I have created a method called Load() – which does all of these things:

/// <summary>
/// Load Customers from NAV via Web Services
/// </summary>
private void Load()
{
PopulateFieldsCollection(typeof(CustomerRef.Customer), typeof(CustomerRef.Customer_Fields));
CustomerRef.Customer_Service service = new CustomerRef.Customer_Service();
service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
this.objects = service.ReadMultiple(null, “”, 0);
PopulateDataTable();
AddDataToExcel();
}

First of all, call the PopulateFieldsCollection method. Then create a Web Service Connection and read all record objects in an array of objects (note that I am NOT using strongly typed class references, as I want this code to be reusable when I work with other pages via Web Services).

The PopulateDataTable method became amazingly simple:

/// <summary>
/// Populate DataTable based on array of objects
/// </summary>
private void PopulateDataTable()
{
// Populate DataTable with data
foreach (object obj in this.objects)
{
DataRow dataRow = this.dataTable.NewRow();
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
dataRow[nfi.field] = nfi.GetValue(obj);
}
this.dataTable.Rows.Add(dataRow);
}
}

Run through all rows and for all rows – run through all columns and get the value from the Record Object into the Data Table.

and the AddDataToExcel really isn’t that hard either:

/// <summary>
/// Add a DataList to Excel
/// This function should work with any Page exposed as Web Service
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”objects”>Array of records to add</param>
private void AddDataToExcel()
{
Application.ScreenUpdating = false;

// Populate Excel Spreadsheet with data
this.dataList = this.Controls.AddListObject(this.Range[this.Cells[1, 1], this.Cells[this.dataTable.Rows.Count + 1, this.dataTable.Columns.Count + 1]], this.dataTable.TableName);
this.dataList.AutoSetDataBoundColumnHeaders = true;
this.dataList.DataSource = this.dataTable;
this.dataTable.AcceptChanges();

// Adjust columns in excel with the right formatting based on Field Info
int col = 1;
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
nfi.AdjustColumn(this.dataList.Range[1, col++] as Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range);
}

Application.ScreenUpdating = true;
}

First, we disable ScreenUpdating, setup a ListObject with the created DataTable, call AdjustColumn on the correct NAVFieldInfo class for the corresponding column and enable screenupdating again.

Running the project with these things gives us:

Now – that’s more like it. We have data in a table, formatting on fields and even options in option fields:

and… Saving the changes!

The only thing we need to do more is to be able to write data back into NAV, if we change something. But wait – we would of course also like to be able to create records and delete records in the spreadsheet – lets see what is needed for that….

We use DataView to look at a subset of a DataTable (deleted, added or modified) and then we need to do react accordingly.

First we run through the deleted records and delete them from NAV – if you want to add a warning, you should do so before calling service.Delete.

// Run through records marked for deletion and delete those
DataView dv = new DataView(this.dataTable, “”, “”, DataViewRowState.Deleted);
foreach (DataRowView drv in dv)
{
object obj = GetRecordObject((string)drv[0]);
if (obj != null)
{
service.Delete(((CustomerRef.Customer)obj).Key);
}
}

Then we run through the added records and add them to NAV:

// Run through added records and add them
dv = new DataView(this.dataTable, “”, “”, DataViewRowState.Added);
foreach (DataRowView drv in dv)
{
CustomerRef.Customer customer = new CustomerTemplate.CustomerRef.Customer();
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
if (nfi.field != “Key”)
{
nfi.SetValue(customer, drv[nfi.field]);
}
}
service.Create(ref customer);
}

and finally we run through the modified records and update them in NAV:

// Run through modified records and update them
dv = new DataView(this.dataTable, “”, “”, DataViewRowState.ModifiedCurrent);
foreach (DataRowView drv in dv)
{
object obj = GetRecordObject((string)drv[0]);
if (obj != null)
{
foreach (NAVFieldInfo nfi in this.fields)
{
if (nfi.field != “Key”)
{
nfi.SetValue(obj, drv[nfi.field]);
}
}
CustomerRef.Customer customer = (CustomerRef.Customer)obj;
service.Update(ref customer);
}
}

and after this – we reload the data.

so… – that was a LOT of code and some explaining. I hope you are with me so far.

I didn’t explain how to add a Ribbon to Excel, nor did I list all the NAVFieldInfo classes in this post, but you can download the solution as source from http://www.freddy.dk/CustomerTemplate.zip and see how these things are done. You can play around with things and/or use pieces of the code in your own solution.

The code shown in this post comes with no warranty – and is only intended for showing how to do things. The code can be reused, changed and incorporated in any project without any further notice.

So that’s all good, but what’s next?

We now have a spreadsheet, which can read customers via Web Services, allow you to modify, add or delete and save the changes through Web Services, which is pretty impressive – but we have 2 more posts on the topic:-)

Next, we want to integrate this into the Customer List Place and get the filter from the List Place to the spreadsheet. To do this we need a Client side COM object, which transfers parameters to the Excel Spreadsheet and launches Excel.

And last, we will make the Edit In Excel work without the Web Reference – meaning that we can just add an action to the pages on which we want the Edit In Excel to work.

Enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Edit In Excel – Part 1 (out of 4)

Posted on November 6, 2008 by freddykristiansen

For the last 6-9 months, Microsoft have been showing a demo of how a user could create a filter on a list place and invoke an action called Edit In Excel. This would open Microsoft Excel with the same records, the user selected in the List Place and allow the user to edit values and post modifications back to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, showing how the user would get a runtime error if he was trying to violate validation logic from NAV.

I will divide this post into 4 sections on how to achieve this

Create an Excel Spreadsheet, which reads the entire Customer table and show it in Excel.
Create an Excel Spreadsheet, which reads the entire Customer table, show it and allow the user to modify, delete or add records directly in Excel – and save the changes back to NAV.
Hook this spreadsheet up to the Customer List Place and take the filter defined on the Customer List Place and apply that to Excel.
Make the damn thing loosely coupled – allowing it to be placed on any List Place if you fancy.

I chose to divide it, in order to allow people better to understand the processes and I think that every one of these four steps will take you through a number of new things.

This first post is all about creating a spreadsheet, which reads the entire Customer table and show it in Excel. We could do this from inside NAV (populate an XML document and send it to the Client) but that would put us into a blind alley when going towards post number 2.

So – we are going to use VSTO

What is VSTO?

VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) came out as an add-on to Visual Studio 2005 and in Visual Studio 2008, it is an integrated part of the professional SKU. Basically it allows you to write code inside Excel, Word, Outlook etc. – add toolbars, menu items, subscribe to triggers and do all kinds of things using your favorite .net language – and mine is C#.

VSTO is NOT in Visual Studio Express SKU’s.

I am not going to make this a tutorial on how to use VSTO – but I will just show a couple of basics. When creating a new project in Visual Studio, you have new options:

and when you select to create an Excel Template – it actually opens up a spreadsheet inside of Visual Studio.

Now Visual Studio might not be your favorite environment for using Excel, but that isn’t the point. If you look to the right you will see a solution and a project with a number of C# files under your .xltx “folder”. These are files, which contains code behind for the different sheets.

Right click on Sheet1.cs and select View Code and you will see:

Which kind of indicates where we are going here…

I can write code in the Sheet1_Startup, which connects to our Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Services and read data into the Spreadsheet – could it really be that simple?

Yes, it really is that simple – but…

… when you see the code beneath in a moment you can see that this is really not scaling – and it really wouldn’t allow us to edit the data – but hey, that is in post number 2 – this was the simple version, let’s continue.

You of course need to add a Web Reference to the Customer page (Page 21 – exposed as Customer) using the following URL (if the NAV is installed as default):

http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV/WS/CRONUS_International_Ltd/Page/Customer

and call the reference CustomerRef.

Add the following code to Sheet1_Startup and run your solution.

// Postpone Screen updating
Application.ScreenUpdating = false;

// Initialize the Service
CustomerRef.Customer_Service service = new CustomerSimple.CustomerRef.Customer_Service();
service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;

// Read the customers
CustomerRef.Customer[] customers = service.ReadMultiple(null, null, 0);

// Populate the header line
int row = 1;
this.Cells[row, 1] = “No”;
this.Cells[row, 2] = “Name”;
this.Cells[row, 3] = “Address”;
this.Cells[row, 4] = “Address_2”;
// etc.

// Fill the spreadsheet
foreach (CustomerRef.Customer customer in customers)
{
row++;
this.Cells[row, 1] = customer.No;
this.Cells[row, 2] = customer.Name;
this.Cells[row, 3] = customer.Address;
this.Cells[row, 4] = customer.Address_2;
// etc.
}

// Set formatting for the added cells
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range range = this.Range[this.Cells[1, 1], this.Cells[row, 4]];
range.EntireColumn.NumberFormat = “@”;
range.EntireColumn.HorizontalAlignment = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Constants.xlLeft;
range.EntireColumn.AutoFit();

// Update the Screen
Application.ScreenUpdating = true;

That’s it and that’s that! This should bring up Excel looking like this:

Not quite the end-goal, but I hope you get the picture.

As usual – you can download the solution here http://www.freddy.dk/CustomerSimple.zip

So where do we go from here?

In the next post we will start by removing the code we just wrote and write some new and better code in C#. We will still not touch NAV (only from Web Services). The goal here is to read the data from NAV into a table, with knowledge about the field types and add the NAV Key to a hidden column – all in order to be able to post data back to NAV.

My next post will also add a couple of buttons to the Excel toolbar and add the Save and Reload functions. It will still be hard coded to the Customer table though.

In my third post I will explain how to get parameters from code on the Service Tier into our Spreadsheet (like the filter) and hook things up accordingly.

Last, but not least, I will explain how we can do this without having a Web Reference to the Customer or other pages – how can we do this dynamically.

Stay tuned, enjoy

Freddy Kristiansen
PM Architect
Microsoft Dynamics NAV