ArcherPoint Dynamics Developer Digest - vol 152
The NAV community, including the ArcherPoint technical staff, is made up of developers, project managers, and consultants who are constantly communicating, with the common goal of sharing helpful information with one another to help customers be more successful.
As they run into issues and questions, find the answers, and make new discoveries, they post them on blogs, forums, social media…so everyone can benefit. We in Marketing watch these interactions and never cease to be amazed by the creativity, dedication, and brainpower we’re so fortunate to have in this community—so we thought, wouldn’t it be great to share this great information with everyone who might not have the time to check out the multitude of resources out there? So, the ArcherPoint Microsoft Dynamics NAV Developer Digest was born. Each week, we present a collection of thoughts and findings from NAV experts and devotees around the world. We hope these insights will benefit you, too.
NAV on Docker with Portainer
Suresh shared this post from Tobias for anyone interested in using Docker for NAV. Bill asks if he’s used Docker NAV for the middle tier yet, noting that he just started scripting a container customization to push NAV into a base container, that possibly Tobias has done this, and sees the possibility to use this to quickly replicate a client’s setup to develop against.
What say you, readers? Have you done this?
Developer tip of the Day: PADSTR
Kyle shares his wisdom with us in his developer tip of the day:
This function normally does a right pad, so this
PADSTR(‘Test’, 10, ‘$’) yields this: Test$$$$$$
But you can make it pad to the left as well with some clever manipulation. I found an example in the Data Exchange code.
PADSTR(”, PadLength – STRLEN(StringToModify) ‘$’) + ‘Test’ yields this: $$$$$$Test
Quick Comparison: Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code
During Fast Forward, ArcherPoint’s corporate conference, Bill Warnke got some questions about Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. Despite the name, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio have no connection at all other than the “Visual Studio” name and Microsoft connection. Architecturally they are totally different animals with different licensing and purposes. You can consider VS Code in the same space as Notepad++, Sublime Text, or Vim.
Visual Studio Code will be the NAV AL source code editor (AL specifics enabled with an extension, not in market yet, as of now does not do RDL). VS Code is also now considered the primary PowerShell editor by Microsoft.
Visual Studio Code vs. Visual Studio at a Glance:
Visual Studio Code
- Lightweight cross-platform text editor
- VS Code is based on node.js (javascript/css) and uses the Chrome V8 engine
- VS Code is free and open source
Visual Studio
- Fully integrated IDE
- VS is written in C++ and C#
- VS is closed source and needs licensing
Additional info: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq
Kyle asks, “Have you stopped using any other text editor? I’ve been a Notepad++ user for years, but am about to install VSC.”
Bill replies, “Pretty much. I still have notepad++ installed and would probably need to use it if I can’t figure out how to show CR LF in VS Code or something. Since it’s the PowerShell and AL editor I figure why not try to use it all the time and get to really know it? I haven’t run into any show stoppers.”
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