{
"Add Comment": {
"prefix": "TriComment",
"body": [
"//TRI ${1:Your Name here} $CURRENT_YEAR-$CURRENT_MONTH-$CURRENT_DATE $CURRENT_HOUR:$CURRENT_MINUTE:$CURRENT_SECOND ${2|+,-,Start,End,++|}"
],
"description": "TRI Add Comment"
}
}
Batch Request in Business Central APIs
When calling Business Central APIs you do one operation at a time. For example, you can only insert or modify one customer, or create one sales invoice. With deep inserts, it is possible to create header and lines together, and then you can create multiple lines. But that’s only possible on the line records, you still create one header at a time. With a batch request, it is possible to combine multiple operations in one request. The batch request is submitted as a single HTTP POST request to the $batch endpoint and the body contains a set of operations. From an optimization point of view, batching minimizes the number of requests from an API consumer because you combine multiple requests into one.
Batch URL
The $batch endpoint is available on all API endpoints. For the Business Central SaaS environment you can use this URL:
https://{{baseurl}}/api/v2.0/$batchEverything I describe here also works for custom APIs. The URL will then look like:
https://{{baseurl}}/api/[publisher]/[group]/[version]/$batchRequest headers
Because the request body will be JSON the Content-Type header of the request must be set to appication/json. If the response should be JSON as well (and you want that!), then the Accept header must also be set to application/json. If you leave the Accept header out, then the response will be multipart/mixed. Here is the basic structure of the request, without the body. I leave out the Authorization header, but you need to add that obviously. 
POST {{baseurl}}/api/v2.0/$batch Content-Type: application/json Accept: application/json
The requests array must contain one ore more operations, and each of them must contains an id, the method and a URL and optionally also headers and a body. Here is an example of an operation to insert a single journal line.
{
"method": "POST",
"id": "r1",
"url": "companies({{companyId}})/journals({{journalId}})/journalLines",
"headers": {
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
"body": {
"accountId": "{{accountId}}",
"postingDate": "2020-10-20",
"documentNumber": "SALARY2020-10",
"amount": -3250,
"description": "Salary to Bob"
}
}
Let’s take the operation above, to insert a single journal line and compose a batch request that inserts multiple journal lines in one go. The request body looks like:
{
"requests": [
{
"method": "POST",
"id": "r1",
"url":
"companies({{companyId}})/journals({{journalId}})/journalLines",
"headers": {
"Content-Type":
"application/json"
},
"body": {
"accountId":
"{{accountId}}",
"postingDate":
"2020-10-20",
"documentNumber":
"SALARY2020-12",
"amount": -3250,
"description": "Salary
to Bob"
}
},
{
"method": "POST",
"id": "r2",
"url":
"companies({{companyId}})/journals({{journalId}})/journalLines",
"headers": {
"Content-Type":
"application/json"
},
"body": {
"accountId":
"{{accountId}}",
"postingDate":
"2020-10-20",
"documentNumber":
"SALARY2020-12",
"amount": -3500,
"description": "Salary
to John"
}
},
{
"method": "POST",
"id": "r3",
"url":
"companies({{companyId}})/journals({{journalId}})/journalLines",
"headers": {
"Content-Type":
"application/json"
},
"body": {
"accountId":
"{{accountId2}}",
"postingDate":
"2020-10-20",
"documentNumber":
"SALARY2020-12",
"amount": 6750,
"description": "Salaries
December 2020"
}
}
]
}
As you can see, each operation has a corresponding result in the response, identified by the id. You should always use the id of the individual operation to find the corresponding result. Don’t assume that the results will always be in the same order as the request! They may seem to be in the same order, but the OData standard describes that the results can be in any order.
Each operation result has a status, which is the HTTP status that you would normally get for a single request. It includes the response headers and response body of the individual operation. The response of the batch request itself will always have status 200 if the server was able to read the batch request. Even if the batch request has operations that couldn’t be processed because of an error condition, the batch response status will still be 200. So don’t only look at the response status of the batch request, you need to read the response body to find out the results of each operation. Only when the batch request body is malformed, or you are not authorized, then the whole batch request will fail and you will get a status 500 (malformed batch request) or status 401 (not authorized).
So far it’s really simple, isn’t it? In the next blog posts in this series, I will cover topics like:
- What happens if an error occurs in one of the requests
- Process a batch as one big transaction
- Combine multiple operations types, like POST and GET
- Define the order of operations
- Reduce the size of the response payload
Function for Split Text With Maximum Characters Without Damaging Words – AL / C/AL
local procedure TrySplitTextWithoutDamagingWords(FullText: Text; MaximumCaractorLength:Integer; var MaximumText: Text; var RemainingText: Text) IsRemainingToSplit: Boolean
var
SpcPos: Integer;
MaxSpcPos: Integer;
CheckText: Text;
begin
FullText := DelChr(FullText, '<>', ' ');
if (FullText = '') or (MaximumCaractorLength = 0) or (StrLen(FullText) <= MaximumCaractorLength) then begin
MaximumText := FullText;
RemainingText := '';
exit(false);
end;
MaximumText := CopyStr(FullText, 1, MaximumCaractorLength);
RemainingText := CopyStr(FullText, MaximumCaractorLength + 1, StrLen(FullText));
if CopyStr(FullText, MaximumCaractorLength+1, 1)<>' 'then begin
CheckText := MaximumText;
repeat begin
SpcPos := StrPos(CheckText, ' ');
MaxSpcPos += SpcPos;
CheckText := CopyStr(CheckText, SpcPos + 1, MaximumCaractorLength);
end until SpcPos = 0;
if MaxSpcPos > 0 then begin
MaximumText := CopyStr(FullText, 1, MaxSpcPos - 1);
RemainingText := CopyStr(FullText, MaxSpcPos + 1, StrLen(FullText));
end;
end;
exit(StrLen(RemainingText) > MaximumCaractorLength);
end;
How to use the function?
There are four parameters and a boolean type return value.
- Parameter – FullText:
The text that you want to split. The data type is Text. - Parameter – MaximumCaractorLength:
Maximum length to split. The data type is Integer. - Parameter – MaximumText:
The var type parameter that will be assigned split text. The data type is Text. - Parameter – RemainingText:
The var type parameter that will be assigned remaining text. The data type is Text. - Return Value – IsRemainingToSplit:
If there is a remaining text exceeding the maximum length it returns true. The data type is Boolean.
Example 1: Single split:
I create three local variables (FullText: Text, SplitText: Text, and RemainingText: Text) and pass them as follows (The maximum character length is 26).
FullText:='NAVUSER is the best site for learning Microsoft Dynamics Navision and Dynamics 365 Business Central.';
TrySplitTextWithoutDamagingWords(FullText,26,SplitText,RemainingText);
Message(SplitText);
FullText:='NAVUSER is the best site for learning Microsoft Dynamics Navision and Dynamics 365 Business Central.';
RemainingText:=FullText;
repeat
TrySplitTextWithoutDamagingWords(RemainingText,26,SplitText,RemainingText);
Message(SplitText);
until RemainingText='';
Isolated Storage instead of Service Password table
Storing passwords directly in a table is a bad idea from a security point of view. For secure storage of passwords, the Service Password system table was previously used. In Business Central 15.0, it has been removed.
We are offered to use a new data type - Isolated Storage. Here we'll look at a practical example of using this functionality to store passwords securely.Suppose that we have a table and a setup page, the user should be able to save the password on the page so that it is used by the system somewhere in the process.To do this, we will write three main procedures: SetPassword(), GetPassword(), GetStorageKey(). Pay attention to the Acces property, it has the value Internal, which will not allow other extensions to access the password. We will also need a secret key in the GUID format by which the password will be stored. You can generate a key in any Online GUID Generator.
In our example, we will use Module DataScope.
table 50000 "General Setup"
{
DataClassification = CustomerContent;
Caption = 'General Setup';
Access = Internal;
fields
{
field(50000; "Primary Key"; Code[10])
{
DataClassification = CustomerContent;
Caption = 'Primary Key';
}
}
keys
{
key(PK; "Primary Key")
{
Clustered = true;
}
}
procedure SetPassword(NewPassword: Text)
var
EncryptionManagement: Codeunit "Cryptography Management";
begin
//Delete old password if exist
if IsolatedStorage.Contains(GetStorageKey(), DataScope::Module) then
IsolatedStorage.Delete((GetStorageKey(), DataScope::Module));
//Encrypt password if possible
if EncryptionManagement.IsEncryptionEnabled() and
EncryptionManagement.IsEncryptionPossible() then
NewPassword := EncryptionManagement.Encrypt(NewPassword);
//Set new password by storage key
IsolatedStorage.set(GetStorageKey(), NewPassword, DataScope::Module);
end;
procedure GetPassword(): Text
var
EncryptionManagement: Codeunit "Cryptography Management";
PasswordTxt: Text;
begin
//Check if password exist by storage key
if IsolatedStorage.Contains(GetStorageKey(), DataScope::Module) then begin
//Get exist password
IsolatedStorage.Get(GetStorageKey(), DataScope::Module, PasswordTxt);
//Decrypt password if possible
if EncryptionManagement.IsEncryptionEnabled() and
EncryptionManagement.IsEncryptionPossible() then
PasswordTxt := EncryptionManagement.Decrypt(PasswordTxt);
//Return password
exit(PasswordTxt);
end;
end;
local procedure GetStorageKey(): Text
var
StorageKeyTxt: Label '25edcb48-11b9-4e7d-8645-2c95b3156092', Locked = true;
begin
exit(StorageKeyTxt);
end;
}
Besides, we need a page where the user can specify a password.
page 50000 "General Setup"
{
PageType = Card;
ApplicationArea = All;
UsageCategory = Administration;
SourceTable = "General Setup";
Caption = 'General Setup';
layout
{
area(Content)
{
group(General)
{
field(PasswordTxt; PasswordTxt)
{
ApplicationArea = All;
ExtendedDatatype = Masked;
Caption = 'Password';
trigger OnValidate()
begin
SetPassword(PasswordTxt);
Commit();
end;
}
}
}
}
trigger OnOpenPage()
begin
Reset();
if not Get() then begin
Init();
Insert();
SetPassword('');
end else
PasswordTxt := '***';
end;
var
PasswordTxt: Text;
}