Is GitHub Copilot Any Good for Business Central Development?
TL;DR No. At least, not yet. Maybe later. But even then, maybe not. Intro For now this is necessarily a simple, first impressions post about GitHub Copilot. I’ve used it for a few weeks, tweeted enthusiastically in the first couple of days’ use and have now disabled it. What is it, how does it work, what’s good, what’s not so good? What is GitHub Copilot? Your AI pair… Continue Reading james’s...
Test Explorer in Visual Studio Code
The July 2021 release of Visual Studio Code (1.59) introduced a new testing API and Test Explorer UI. From v0.6.0 this API is used by AL Test Runner. Test Explorer Demo Improvements UI The biggest improvement is the Test Explorer view which shows your test codeunits, their test methods and the status of each. Hovering over a test gives you three icons to run, debug or open… Continue Reading james’s Article on their blog...
Using Code Coverage in Business Central Development
Intro Sample code coverage summary In the latest version of AL Test Runner I’ve added an overall percentage code coverage and totals for number of lines hit and number of lines. I’ve hesitated whether to add this in previous versions. Let me explain why. Measuring Code Coverage First, what these stats actually are. From right to left: Code Coverage 79% (501/636) The total… Continue Reading james’s Article on...
Get Errors from a Docker Container Event Log
“You cannot sign in due to a technical issue. Contact your system administrator.”Business Central Terrific. This is in a local Docker container, so I am the system administrator. Give me a second while I contact myself… …nope, myself didn’t know what the problem was either. It could be that the license has expired, maybe there is something wrong with the tenant, the service tier… Continue Reading...
Show Table Data from AL Test Runner
Why? If you are writing Business Central automated tests then you are probably creating some data as part of those tests. Sometimes it can be useful to see the records that have been created, especially if you are trying to create the correct scenario for the GIVEN part of your test and are experimenting with the library codeunits in that part of the system. Of course you can debug your… Continue Reading james’s Article on...
Increase ODataServicesOperationTimeout for Longer Debugging
TL;DR Invoke-ScriptInBCContainer [container name] {Set-NavServerConfiguration bc -KeyName ODataServicesOperationTimeout -KeyValue 00:20:00 -ApplyTo All} Timeout Error If you use AL Test Runner to debug your tests then you are using the OData services to run the test in the background. OData calls have a timeout that is determined by the ODataServicesOperationTimeout key in the service… Continue Reading james’s Article...
Upgrade Your StrMenus to Confirmation Pages
Exhibit A: StrMenu when posting a sales document Prompting the User Sometimes we want to ask users to make a decision before executing some business logic. Often we just want a yes/no answer and can use a simple Confirm. But what if you can’t phrase the question to give a yes/no answer? Or if there are more than two options for the user to select between? Traditionally we’ve used… Continue Reading james’s...
Using the WebPageViewer Add-In For Business Central
Since the introduction of pages, and the deprecation of forms, we have had a fixed set of page types that we can create and a fixed set of controls that we can use on those pages. In the main, that’s a good thing. An appropriate control (text entry, date picker, checkbox etc.) is automatically used depending on the data type of the field, developers need to spend less time on the UI and the… Continue Reading james’s...
Measuring Code Coverage in Business Central with AL Test Runner
v0.5.0 of AL Test Runner adds some capability to measure code coverage per object and highlight the lines of code that were hit in the previous test run. This is an example of what we’re aiming for. Running one or more tests, seeing the list of objects and the percentage of their code lines that were hit, opening those objects and highlighting those lines. This should help identify objects… Continue Reading james’s...
Extending Item Tracking in Business Central
I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front for the last few months – settling in to a new team and a new role. For the first post of 2021 what better topic than Item Tracking? Let’s be honest, the Item Tracking Lines page is a mess. Over 3,000 lines of code, tonnes of global variables and more than 60 methods. I don’t think the fundamental design of the page has changed much since it was… Continue...
Part 2a: (Slightly) More Elegant Error Handling in Business Central
One of the underrated advantages to doing a little blogging is that you can write about a subject you know a little about and have people who actually know what they are talking about reply to tell you a better way to do it. There’s probably a minimum threshold of credibility on the subject you need in order for people to post serious replies. If I posted some nonsense about my keyhole… Continue Reading james’s...
Part 2: (Slightly) More Elegant Error Handling in Business Central
Part 2 of the series that I said that I was going to write has been a long time coming. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you might want to read the first post in the series here. Unfortunately it is possible that this series reflects the functionality that it is describing: full of early promise, but on closer inspection a little convoluted and disappointing. I’ll leave you to be the… Continue Reading...
Debugging Business Central Tests with AL Test Runner
TL;DR Install the Test Runner Service app (see https://github.com/jimmymcp/test-runner-service; direct download of the app file from here) or use the “Install Test Runner Service” command from VS Code to install into the Docker container specified in the config fileSet the URL to the test runner service in the testRunnerServiceUrl key of the AL Test Runner config fileDefine a debug… Continue Reading james’s...
Tip: Evaluating DateTime with Type Helper
Dates. What a nightmare. Day/Month/Year? Month/Day/Year? 24 hour time? 12 hour time? It’s almost enough to make you sympathetic to the idea of decimal time…almost. Type Helper codeunit to the rescue. It has a method to allow you to evaluate the text of a date, time or datetime into the corresponding type according to a format that you specify. AVariant := DateResult; FormatString :=… Continue Reading james’s...
Record Rename/Modify Considerations
TL;DR Use table extensions to extend the OnModify trigger rather than OnBefore/AfterModify subscriptions where possible. If you must use subscribers then be aware of some of the unexpected situation they are called in. One of those situations is when a related table has been renamed. The Modify events are thrown in secondary tables e.g. if an Item record is renamed than all of its Item… Continue Reading james’s Article on...
(Slightly) More Elegant Error Handling in Business Central
This is an intro post to the Error Message Mgt. codeunit and related objects. NAV has never brilliant when it comes to error handling, for a couple of reasons. The error messages themselves sometimes leave a lot to be desiredThe whac-a-mole nature of fixing multiple errors by finding one at a time and attempting to post/register again There isn’t a lot we can do about the standard error… Continue Reading james’s...
Share Docker Containers With VS Code Live Share
If you weren’t working remotely before 2020 then we’ve all had to guess used to it this year. Collaboration tools like Teams are invaluable for keeping up with teammates during the day, discussing work and bouncing ideas and banter off each other. Video calls, screen sharing, chat, shared documents, gifs – that’s all great – but not quite a replacement for sitting at the same desk and looking…...
Tip: Octopus Merges in Git
If you occasionally glance at my blog you might have noticed that I am a big fan of pull requests as served up by Azure DevOps (exhibit A). I briefly described our typical branching strategy here, including how and why we use pull requests. I love it. Writing, testing and reviewing discrete pieces of development independently of one another helps spread the work around the team and prevent… Continue Reading james’s Article...
Testing Internal Functionality
Internal Access Modifier We’ve had access modifiers in Business Central for a little while now. You can use them to protect tables, fields, codeunits and queries that shouldn’t be accessible to code outside your app. For example, you might have a table that contains some sensitive data. Perhaps some part of a licensing mechanism or internal workings of your app that no one else should… Continue Reading james’s...
Getting Started with Git Hooks
Git hooks have been on my “to mess about with and learn a little some day” list for a while. It’s the old conundrum: I might use them if I knew what they could do, but I’m not going to learn about them until I’ve got a use for them. Chickens-and-eggs for developers. The Problem Until recently, that is. I wondered: What is the best way to save a different launch configuration in VS… Continue Reading...
“Discrete Business Logic” implements Interface
If you’ve read anything about what is new in BC16 for developers then you’ll have seen that AL now supports interfaces (fanfare). No more convoluted workarounds with events – at least once our customers have upgraded. I won’t explain what interfaces are and how to use them in AL. You can read the release notes here or blog posts like this and this. Instead I’m going to share some thoughts… Continue...
Performance of Test Code
Let’s talk about the performance of the test code that we write for Business Central. What do I mean by “performance” and how can we improve it? Defining “Performance” Obviously, before we set out to improve something we need to have an idea of what it is we’re trying to optimise for. I’m coming to think of the performance of test code in a couple of key ways: How easy/quick is it to…...
Tip: Case Insensitive Glob Patterns
I must admit I hadn’t heard of glob patterns until seeing some settings in VS Code that use them. They are a way of defining a pattern that matches one or more files and folders. For example, the Text Editor section of the settings (UI) in VS Code allows you to exclude files and folders from the file explorer with glob patterns and gives you this useful link for more information. My AL… Continue Reading james’s...
Managing Business Central Development with Git: Platforms
Another post about Business Central development and Git. Maybe the last one. Who knows? Whatever your precise circumstances, if you are developing apps for Business Central you have to be mindful of the differences between BC versions and how it affects your app. If you are only developing for SaaS you might only care about the current and next version. If you are developing and… Continue Reading james’s Article on their...
Problem with Case Statement in Business Central 13
This is a a pretty niche post. Hopefully this problem only exists in a specific set of circumstances, in Business Central v13, but we wasted enough hours of our lives chasing it down yesterday that I thought I’d share it. Consider this case statement: i := 3; test := true; case i of 1: exit(‘i equals 1’); 2: if test then exit(‘i equals 2, test is true’) else if… Continue Reading james’s...
Managing Business Central Development with Git: Branching Strategy
The last few posts have been about manipulating the history of your Git repository, getting comfortable tools like rebase, reset, cherry-pick and commit –amend. That’s all geared towards trying to create a history which is more than just a record of stuff that happened but tells a story of the development of your app that is useful for your colleagues and your future self. This post is on… Continue Reading...
Tip: Format AL Files OnSave in Visual Studio Code
Maybe everyone else is already doing this and I’m just slow on the uptake but Visual Studio Code has options to automatically format files at various points. The AL extension for VS Code provides a formatter for .al files. You can run it manually with the Format Document command (Shift+Alt+F). This inserts the correct number of spaces between parameters and brackets, indents lines… Continue Reading james’s Article on...
Managing Business Central Development with Git: Branches
Obligatory Preamble I wasn’t really intending to write this post. If you want training materials for learning the basic concepts of Git then there is tonnes of great free content around on blogs and YouTube channels. I was going to share some thoughts about our branching strategy but thought I’d write a little about manipulating branches first. Amble When I was new to Git and trying… Continue Reading james’s...
Managing Business Central Development with Git: Rebasing
This is part two of a series about using Git to manage your Business Central development. This time – rebasing. It seems that rebasing can be something of a daunting subject. It needn’t be. Let’s start with identifying the base of a branch before worrying about rebasing. Example Repo Imagine this repository where I’ve created a new branch feature/new-field-on-sales-docs to do some… Continue Reading...
Managing Business Central Development with Git: Amending History
Preamble This is the start of a series of posts about managing AL development with Git. I don’t profess to be a Git expert and much of what I write about will not exclusively apply to Business Central development. This is a collection of approaches I’ve found to be useful when it comes to managing our source code. Take what you will, discard the rest, vociferously argue with me if you feel… Continue Reading...
Testing Against a Remote Docker Host with AL Test Runner
Apologies for another post about AL Test Runner. If you don’t use or care about the extension you can probably stop reading now and come back next time. It isn’t my intention to keep banging on about it – but the latest version (v0.2.1) does plug a significant gap. Next time I’ll move onto a different subject – some thoughts about how we use Git to manage our code effectively. Developing… Continue...
Remote Development with VS Code and AL Test Runner
The most obvious limitation of the AL Test Runner extension for VS Code has been that you need to run VS Code on the Docker host machine. That’s fine for us because we do all our development on local Docker containers but I’m aware that this isn’t everyone’s preferred process. Local Repo and VS Code, Remote Docker Host I guess if you’re not hosting the Docker container locally then you… Continue...
Scheduling Azure DevOps Pipelines with YAML
I had the pleasure of presenting some thoughts about developing apps for SaaS with James Crowter to the Dutch Dynamics Community yesterday. We were sharing some of our experiences of the maintenance challenge that comes with having published apps on AppSource. How can you continuously test your apps against past, current and upcoming versions of Business Central? Perhaps two ways: Slowly… Continue Reading james’s Article...
Putting Queries to Use in Business Central
We’ve had query objects for a while now – since NAV 2013 (I think). In theory they sound great, link a bunch of tables together, aggregate some columns, get distinct values, left join, right join, cross join – executed as a single SQL query. Why Don’t We Use Queries Much? In practice I haven’t seen them used that much. There’s probably a variety of reasons for that: We have limited… Continue...
AL Test Runner 0.1.15
This is a brief update about the AL Test Runner extension that I’ve been working on for VS Code. I’ve had some great feedback and suggestions via GitHub, a pull request correcting me being a muppet and 300-odd installs so far. Thanks to everyone who has got involved to improve it. This version includes a new setting “Publish Before Test” which allows you to invoke either the “Publish… Continue...
Some More About Translating Business Central Apps
I’ve written before about using Azure Cognitive Services to translate the captions in the .xlf file that is generated when you compile your Business Central app. For us, the motivation is to make our apps available in as many countries as possible in AppSource. Since then Søren Alexandersen has announced that it will not be necessary to provide all of a country’s official languages to make… Continue Reading...
AL Test Runner for Visual Studio Code
TL;DR I’ve written an extension for VS Code to help run your AL tests in local Docker containers. Search for “AL Test Runner” in the extension marketplace or click here. Feedback, bugs, feature suggestions all gratefully received on the GitHub repo or james@jpearson.blog Intro As soon as Freddy added capability to the navcontainerhelper module to execute automated tests I was excited… Continue Reading...
Prompting the User for Input with PowerShell
Sometimes you need to prompt the user to provide some value before you can complete your PowerShell script. You’ve got a few different options depending on what you’re asking the user to select from. Parameters Setting a parameter as mandatory without providing a value will prompt the user to enter one, like this: function Invoke-AmazingPowerShellFunction { Param( … Continue Reading james’s Article on their...
Satisfying Your Case-Sensitive Obsession with Regex
Obsession is probably a little strong, but I do like tidy code. You know – proper indentation, a sensible number of comments (which can be more than none but there shouldn’t be as much comment as code) and good names. Hungarian notation brings me out in a rash. This extends to having keywords, variables and methods in the right case. While in CAL there was a lot of UPPERCASE, in AL there is… Continue Reading...
You Can Ditch Our Build Helper for Dynamics 365 Business Central
I’m a bit of a minimalist when it comes to tooling, so I’m always happy to ditch a tool because its functionality can be provided by something else I’m already using. In a previous post I described how we use our Build Helper AL app to prep a test suite with the test codeunits and methods that you want to run. Either as part of a CI/CD pipeline or to run from VS Code. Freddy K has… Continue Reading...
Stop Writing Automated Tests and Get On With Some Real Code
To be fair, these weren’t the exact words that were used, but a view was expressed from the keynote stage at Directions last week along these lines. Frustration that developers now have to concern themselves with infrastructure, like Docker, and writing automated tests rather than “real” code. I couldn’t resist a short post in response to this view. If It Doesn’t Add Value, Stop Doing… Continue...
Debugging the Next Session in Business Central
Business Central v15 includes some good new stuff for developers. Access modifiers for objects, smarter code analysis, background page tasks – there is a list of stuff here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-business-central/developer-tools I’ve just been trying out the new debugger capability, specifically being able to attach the debugger to… Continue Reading...
Using Templates in YAML Pipelines in Azure DevOps
So far we’ve been considering how you can define a yaml pipeline to define the steps required to build the code in a single repository. Create a .azure-pipelines.yml file, add the stages, jobs and steps and away you go. Cool. What if you’re building multiple apps with the source code in multiple repositories though? You could just copy your pipeline definition from repo to repo. What… Continue Reading james’s...
YAML Multi-Stage Pipelines in Azure DevOps, Stage 2
In the previous post I introduced you to multi-stage YAML pipelines. Build/Release pipelines vs. a multi-stage pipeline, enabling the preview feature (it’s still in preview at the time of writing) and an overview of the structure of the file. Now we’ll take a more detailed look at an example multi-stage YAML file. This is geared at building apps for Business Central but the principles are… Continue Reading...
YAML Multi-Stage Pipelines in Azure DevOps, Stage 1
Let’s return to the subject of pipelines and this time let’s talk multi-stages. What is it and why might you want to implement it in your YAML file? Builds/Releases With the approach that Microsoft are now calling “classic” pipelines there was a definite division between a build pipeline and a release pipeline. A build starts with a given version of your source code (a particular… Continue Reading...
AL Build Helper for Dynamics 365 Business Central Builds
If you’re interested in setting up a build pipeline to build apps for Business Central then you’re probably interested in running the automated tests as part of it. (I take it you are writing automated tests?) Turns out getting your test codeunits and methods populated into a test suite ready to run isn’t straightforward. We use a separate “Build Helper” app that exposes a couple of web… Continue...
Dynamics 365 Business Central Queries: Erm…where are the rest of my rows?!
This is a bit off-topic to what I’ve been blogging about lately but I’ve been caught out by this before and the other day so was a colleague so I thought it was worth a post. TL;DR Be careful of the difference between DataItemLink and DataItemTableFilter properties. DataItemLinks define the join between the dataitems in the query while DataItemTableFilters are applied to the results… Continue Reading james’s...
Working with Translations in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Intro Languages: what an almighty headache. Computerphile have a great video that describes just how big the problem is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j74jcxSunY Perhaps my perception is skewed by my ignorant native-English-speaker point of view. I haven’t grown up in a country where learning multiple languages and being able to switch between them is essential. Sure, I wish* I could… Continue Reading james’s...
Building Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Apps on Azure DevOps Hosted Agents
This is a quick follow up to this post. If you want an intro to building AL apps for Business Central you might want to check that out first. In order to build your apps you need a build agent running somewhere which will listen for new jobs and run the scripts, create the Docker containers, run the tests or do whatever else you define in the build file. You can install an agent on your… Continue Reading james’s Article on...
Building Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Apps with Azure DevOps
Last time out we were discussing defining your build pipeline in a YAML file. That post was an intro to what pipelines are and the benefits of defining the tasks that it runs in a YAML file alongside your other source code. Now we’ll turn our attention to some Business Central specific considerations. Objectives We’re start by defining the key objectives of the build… Continue Reading james’s Article on their...