CRM 2011: Getting entity with Javascript

Question

I am working on some CRM 2011 Online customisations and I need to get an entity using javascript.

The entity I need will be based on the ID value of another field (a Contact entity) - this Contact ID I can get fine.

The entity I want is a custom entity. There may be multiple matches based on the Contact ID so I just want to get the first one in the list (order not important)

So far I have looked into a few ways to do this...

• OData - I couldn't find enough examples on this as to what query expressions I can create, also I don't know if/how to make this work for custom entities

• FetchXML - I can create a nice FetchXML query using the built-in "advanced find" too and would be happy to call this from javascript if anyone can help? I found one promising answer here but I could not see how the "results" return data was being set (Service.Fetch function)

• SOAP Request - First thing I tried is a similar method as I could have done in CRM 4 but this does not seem to work. Although the request executes, my result data just seems to be empty. This is all I have code for so if any one can spot a problem with the code below then that would be great.

EDIT: I have spotted some redundant query data (I had removed link opening tags but left closing tags) - since removing this I now get XML result data... however, the where clause does not seem to apply (just get list of all entities)

    var xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>" + 
    "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">" + 
    GenerateAuthenticationHeader() +
    "<soap:Body>" + 
    "<RetrieveMultiple xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">" + 
    "<query xmlns:q1=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/Query\" xsi:type=\"q1:QueryExpression\">" + 
    "<q1:EntityName>new_vehicle</q1:EntityName>" + 
    "<q1:ColumnSet xsi:type='q1:ColumnSet'>" + 
    "<q1:Attributes>" + 
    "<q1:Attribute>new_vehicleid</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>new_primarydriver</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>statuscode</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>new_registration</q1:Attribute>" +
    "</q1:Attributes>" + 
    "</q1:ColumnSet>" + 
    "<q1:Distinct>false</q1:Distinct>" + 

    "<q1:Conditions>" + 

                     "<q1:Condition>" +
                     "<q1:AttributeName>new_primarydriver</q1:AttributeName>" +
    "<q1:Operator>Equal</q1:Operator>" +
    "<q1:Values>" +
    "<q1:Value xmlns:q2='http://microsoft.com/wsdl/types/' xsi:type='q2:guid'>" +
    customerID +
    "</q1:Value></q1:Values></q1:Condition>" + 

    "</q1:Conditions>" +

    "</query></RetrieveMultiple>" +
    "</soap:Body></soap:Envelope>";


    var xmlHttpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");

    xmlHttpRequest.Open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx", false);
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/RetrieveMultiple");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
    xmlHttpRequest.send(xml);

    var result = xmlHttpRequest.responseXML.xml;
    var doc = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument");
    doc.async = false;
    doc.loadXML(result);

    var id = doc.selectSingleNode("//new_vehicleid");
    var registration = doc.selectSingleNode("//new_registration");

    if(id == null)
       return null;

    var vehicle = new Array();
                     value[0] = new Object();
                     value[0].id = id;
                     value[0].name = registration;
                     value[0].entityType = "new_vehicle";

    return vehicle;

Sorry about the big code post but hopefully somebody who has a better understanding can help

Answer 1

Firstly, thanks to GlennFerrieLive for his answer post. The samples I found with the Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK (well just one in particular) really helped and the JSON parser included was perfect for the job!

I am posting this answer to give a full example of how I did it with some important comments to pay attention to which may not be so obvious from the SDK examples.

---

Get selected ID value from lookup field

The aim of my task was to use javascript to get set a lookup field, based on the selected data of another lookup entity. The entity to set is "new_vehicle" and the entity to query on is "customer".

First job is to get the ID value of the contact lookup field...

var customerItem = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("customerid").getValue();
var customerID = customerItem[0].id;

---

Querying an entity using an ID

Next is the part where I used the customerID value to find the vehicle that is currently assigned to them (the entity I want to use to set a lookup field).

First problem I found was that when querying with OData, the ID value does not seem to work with curly brackets {} - so these need to be removed...

customerID = customerID.replace('{', '').replace('}', '');

Next we get the oDataPath...

var oDataPath = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/xrmservices/2011/organizationdata.svc";

Then we can construct the OData query...

var filter = "/new_vehicleSet?" +
  "$select=new_vehicleId,new_Registration" + 
  "&$filter=new_PrimaryDriver/Id eq (guid'" + customerID + "')" + 
  "&$orderby=new_LastAllocationDate desc" + 
  "&$top=1";

NOTE: There are a couple of important things to note here...

1. When using a guid value you must explicitly say it is a guid using (guid'xxx')
2. When filtering by a lookup entity (e.g. new_PrimaryDriver) you must append the value to query (e.g. Id) - this results in new_PrimaryDriver/Id

Once we have the query setup we can request the data as follows...

var retrieveRecordsReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
retrieveRecordsReq.open("GET", oDataPath + filter, true);
retrieveRecordsReq.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
retrieveRecordsReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
retrieveRecordsReq.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (this.readyState == 4) {
       if (this.status == 200) {
           var retrievedRecords = JSON.parse(retrieveRecordsReq.responseText).d;
           if(retrievedRecords.results.length > 0)
           {
               var vehicle = retrievedRecords.results[0];
               SetLookup("new_replacedvehicle", vehicle.new_vehicleId, vehicle.new_Registration, "new_vehicle");
           }
       }
    }
};
retrieveRecordsReq.send();

Note that this is an asynchronous call and the onreadystatechange function will be processed upon completion, in this function we do a couple of checks to see if it was a success and the we parse the resulting JSON data - the JSON.Parse function has been included at the bottom of this post (but is available from the SDK)

---

Setting a lookup field using the entity queried above

The other function to make note of here is SetLookup which is just a simple helper function I added to set a lookup field. This is as follows...

function SetLookup(fieldName, idValue, textValue, typeValue)
{
    var value = new Array();
    value[0] = new Object();
    value[0].id = idValue;
    value[0].name = textValue;
    value[0].typename = typeValue;

    Xrm.Page.getAttribute(fieldName).setValue(value);
}

---

JSON parse function

This is the JSON helper function that was used in the above code (JSON.parse), pasted as it was found in the SDK...

if (!this.JSON) { this.JSON = {}; } (function () { function f(n) { return n < 10 ? '0' + n : n; } if (typeof Date.prototype.toJSON !== 'function') { Date.prototype.toJSON = function (key) { return isFinite(this.valueOf()) ? this.getUTCFullYear() + '-' + f(this.getUTCMonth() + 1) + '-' + f(this.getUTCDate()) + 'T' + f(this.getUTCHours()) + ':' + f(this.getUTCMinutes()) + ':' + f(this.getUTCSeconds()) + 'Z' : null; }; String.prototype.toJSON = Number.prototype.toJSON = Boolean.prototype.toJSON = function (key) { return this.valueOf(); }; } var cx = /[\u0000\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/g, escapable = /[\\\"\x00-\x1f\x7f-\x9f\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/g, gap, indent, meta = { '\b': '\\b', '\t': '\\t', '\n': '\\n', '\f': '\\f', '\r': '\\r', '"': '\\"', '\\': '\\\\' }, rep; function quote(string) { escapable.lastIndex = 0; return escapable.test(string) ? '"' + string.replace(escapable, function (a) { var c = meta[a]; return typeof c === 'string' ? c : '\\u' + ('0000' + a.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-4); }) + '"' : '"' + string + '"'; } function str(key, holder) { var i, k, v, length, mind = gap, partial, value = holder[key]; if (value && typeof value === 'object' && typeof value.toJSON === 'function') { value = value.toJSON(key); } if (typeof rep === 'function') { value = rep.call(holder, key, value); } switch (typeof value) { case 'string': return quote(value); case 'number': return isFinite(value) ? String(value) : 'null'; case 'boolean': case 'null': return String(value); case 'object': if (!value) { return 'null'; } gap += indent; partial = []; if (Object.prototype.toString.apply(value) === '[object Array]') { length = value.length; for (i = 0; i < length; i += 1) { partial[i] = str(i, value) || 'null'; } v = partial.length === 0 ? '[]' : gap ? '[\n' + gap + partial.join(',\n' + gap) + '\n' + mind + ']' : '[' + partial.join(',') + ']'; gap = mind; return v; } if (rep && typeof rep === 'object') { length = rep.length; for (i = 0; i < length; i += 1) { k = rep[i]; if (typeof k === 'string') { v = str(k, value); if (v) { partial.push(quote(k) + (gap ? ': ' : ':') + v); } } } } else { for (k in value) { if (Object.hasOwnProperty.call(value, k)) { v = str(k, value); if (v) { partial.push(quote(k) + (gap ? ': ' : ':') + v); } } } } v = partial.length === 0 ? '{}' : gap ? '{\n' + gap + partial.join(',\n' + gap) + '\n' + mind + '}' : '{' + partial.join(',') + '}'; gap = mind; return v; } } if (typeof JSON.stringify !== 'function') { JSON.stringify = function (value, replacer, space) { var i; gap = ''; indent = ''; if (typeof space === 'number') { for (i = 0; i < space; i += 1) { indent += ' '; } } else if (typeof space === 'string') { indent = space; } rep = replacer; if (replacer && typeof replacer !== 'function' && (typeof replacer !== 'object' || typeof replacer.length !== 'number')) { throw new Error('JSON.stringify'); } return str('', { '': value }); }; } if (typeof JSON.parse !== 'function') { JSON.parse = function (text, reviver) { var j; function walk(holder, key) { var k, v, value = holder[key]; if (value && typeof value === 'object') { for (k in value) { if (Object.hasOwnProperty.call(value, k)) { v = walk(value, k); if (v !== undefined) { value[k] = v; } else { delete value[k]; } } } } return reviver.call(holder, key, value); } text = String(text); cx.lastIndex = 0; if (cx.test(text)) { text = text.replace(cx, function (a) { return '\\u' + ('0000' + a.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-4); }); } if (/^[\],:{}\s]*$/.test(text.replace(/\\(?:["\\\/bfnrt]|u[0-9a-fA-F]{4})/g, '@').replace(/"[^"\\\n\r]*"|true|false|null|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?/g, ']').replace(/(?:^|:|,)(?:\s*\[)+/g, ''))) { j = eval('(' + text + ')'); return typeof reviver === 'function' ? walk({ '': j }, '') : j; } throw new SyntaxError('JSON.parse'); }; } } ());