ArcherPoint Microsoft Dynamics NAV Developer Digest - vol 27
The ArcherPoint technical staff—made up of developers, project managers, and consultants – is constantly communicating internally, with the goal of sharing helpful information with one another.
As they run into issues and questions, find the answers, and make new discoveries, they post them companywide on Yammer for everyone’s 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 group—so we thought, wouldn’t it be great to share them with the rest of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Community? So, the ArcherPoint Microsoft Dynamics NAV Developer Digest was born. Each week, we present a collection of thoughts and findings from the ArcherPoint staff. We hope these insights will benefit you, too.
Tri Luong asked about passing a value of bigtext data type out to web service using XMPport:
Does anyone know of a way to pass a value of BigText data type out to web service using XMLport? I created a BigText variable and assigned values to it using the ADDTEXT command, but it’s not returning to web service.
Matt Traxinger replied:
I know in the past when I’ve dealt with BigText and XML (not necessarily XMLports) I’ve had to use CData sections within the XML.
Owen McDonald added:
You can expose the BigText directly on the function for the web service. It looks like it’s still only able to work via encoding to a string.
See this blog from MSDN: Transferring binary data to/from WebServices (and to/from COM (Automation) objects)
Tri Luong concludes with:
It turns out that if the BigText variable contains only printable characters, you don’t have to do anything special exporting it with XMLport.
Faithie Robertson on a hidden feature in Object Designer:
So you probably all know this and I’m probably the last to find out…but I’ll share it anyway :). This morning, while hitting the wrong keys, I discovered something within object designer (NAV 2013 R2).
If you open an object in design mode (don’t click anywhere on the screen – just let it open) and then hold down the shift key and hit a letter (in my case “X”), you’ll immediately move to the first line that starts with “X”. When you do it in a code unit, if you use the first letter of a function name, it’ll stop at that function trigger…provided that is the first line with that as the first character. But it only works one time. After that, cursor focus is set on the lines themselves and it no longer works.
So, what can we do with that? Gee…I’m not sure! Maybe one of you can think of why this is a good feature (or hidden “Easter Egg”)?
Faithie Robertson on compiling with local variables:
It looks like it’s my day to find the crazy stuff. In NAV 2013 R2 (7.1.37102.0) if you define a local variable in a request page control that is also defined under the same name as a global, it will of course compile. But when you run the report, you get the biggest baddest error ever! “Compilation of assembly ‘C:ProgramDataMicrosoftMicrosoft DynamicsNAV71ServerMicrosoftDynamics NavServer$……etc, etc, etc!!! See below – it stretches bigger than the page! At first I thought my laptop needed an exorcism! But midway down you start seeing the “Request page does not have a definition for
Jon Long on Tips, Tricks and Time Savers for XMLPorts:
In XMLPorts, these are the system delimiters and their behavior:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| There is no FieldEndDelimiter | |
| Any combination of CR and LF characters | |
| CR followed by LF | |
| CR alone | |
| LF alone | |
| Tabulator alone | |
| strings | The literal string entered |