Month: April 2018

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My Soap Service Proxy Codeunit

Up to now we in Advania have been using the method described here on my blog to connect to most of the Soap web services that we needed to integrate with.

The problem with this method is that we have to manage a lot of DLLs.  This has caused some issues and problems.

Another thing is that we are moving to AL.  And in AL we can’t just throw in a custom DLL to do all the work.

In C/AL We can do this with standard dotnet objects

        DOMDoc := DOMDoc.XmlDocument;
        DOMProcessingInstruction := DOMDoc.CreateProcessingInstruction('xml','version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"');
        DOMDoc.AppendChild(DOMProcessingInstruction);
        DOMElement := DOMDoc.CreateElement('soap:Envelope','http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
        DOMElement.SetAttribute('xmlns:soap','http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
        DOMElement.SetAttribute('xmlns:xsi','http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance');
        DOMElement.SetAttribute('xmlns:xsd','http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema');
        DOMElement.SetAttribute('xmlns:ws','http://ws.msggw.siminn');

        DOMElement2 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('soap:Header','http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
        DOMElement.AppendChild(DOMElement2);

        DOMElement2 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('soap:Body','http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
        DOMElement3 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:sendSMS','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:username','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := SMSSetup."Service User Name";
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:password','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := SMSSetup."Service Password";
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:source','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := SMSSetup.Sender;
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:destination','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := SendTo;
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:text','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := SendText;
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:encoding','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := '0';
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement4 := DOMDoc.CreateElement('ws:flash','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMElement4.InnerText := '0';
        DOMElement3.AppendChild(DOMElement4);
        DOMElement2.AppendChild(DOMElement3);
        DOMElement.AppendChild(DOMElement2);
        DOMDoc.AppendChild(DOMElement);

        HttpWebRequest := HttpWebRequest.Create(SMSSetup."SOAP URL");
        HttpWebRequest.Timeout := 30000;
        HttpWebRequest.UseDefaultCredentials(TRUE);
        HttpWebRequest.Method := 'POST';
        HttpWebRequest.ContentType := 'text/xml; charset=utf-8';
        HttpWebRequest.Accept := 'text/xml';
        HttpWebRequest.Headers.Add('soapAction','urn:sendSMS');
        MemoryStream := HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream;
        DOMDoc.Save(MemoryStream);
        MemoryStream.Flush;
        MemoryStream.Close;

        NAVWebRequest := NAVWebRequest.NAVWebRequest;
        IF NOT NAVWebRequest.doRequest(HttpWebRequest,HttpWebException,HttpWebResponse) THEN
          ERROR(Text003,HttpWebException.Status.ToString,HttpWebException.Message);

        MemoryStream := HttpWebResponse.GetResponseStream;
        DOMResponseDoc := DOMResponseDoc.XmlDocument;
        DOMResponseDoc.Load(MemoryStream);
        MemoryStream.Flush;
        MemoryStream.Close;

        ReceivedNameSpaceMgt := ReceivedNameSpaceMgt.XmlNamespaceManager(DOMResponseDoc.NameTable);
        ReceivedNameSpaceMgt.AddNamespace('ns','http://ws.msggw.siminn');
        DOMNode := DOMResponseDoc.SelectSingleNode('//ns:return',ReceivedNameSpaceMgt);

        Response := DOMNode.InnerText;
        Success :=  Response = 'SUCCESS';
        IF ShowResult AND Success THEN
          MESSAGE(Text001)
        ELSE IF ShowResult AND NOT Success THEN
          ERROR(Text005,Response);

AL code to do the same with the built in AL objects but that code is not much shorter.

With a custom proxy DLL the code would be

Proxy := Proxy.SMSWS;
Proxy.Url := SMSSetup."SOAP URL";
Response := Proxy.sendSMS(Username,Password,SenderText,SendTo,SendText,'0',FALSE,FALSE,'0');
Success :=  Response = 'SUCCESS';
IF ShowResult AND Success THEN
  MESSAGE(Text001)
ELSE IF ShowResult AND NOT Success THEN
  ERROR(Text005,Response);

With this example we can easily see why we have chosen to create a proxy DLL for most of the Soap services.

I wanted to find a way to make things easier in AL and I remembered having dealt with C/AL objects by Vjeko from some time ago.  I took another look and that code helped me to get started.

The result is a Soap Proxy Client Mgt. Codeunit in C/AL that I have sent to Microsoft’s cal-open-library project asking to have this code put into the standard C/AL library.

Using this Codeunit the code will be like this.

  WITH SoapProxyClientMgt DO BEGIN
    CreateSoapProxy(SMSSetup."SOAP URL");
    InitParameters(9);
    SetParameterValue(Username,1);
    SetParameterValue(Password,2);
    SetParameterValue(SenderText,3);
    SetParameterValue(SendTo,4);
    SetParameterValue(SendText,5);
    SetParameterValue('0',6);
    SetParameterValue(FALSE,7);
    SetParameterValue(FALSE,8);
    SetParameterValue('0',9);
    InvokeMethod('SMSWS','sendSMS',TempBlob);
    XmlBuffer.LoadFromText(TempBlob.ReadAsTextWithCRLFLineSeparator);
    IF XmlBuffer.FindNodesByXPath(XmlBuffer,'/string') THEN
      Response := XmlBuffer.Value;
    Success :=  Response = 'SUCCESS';
    IF ShowResult AND Success THEN
      MESSAGE(Text001)
    ELSE IF ShowResult AND NOT Success THEN
      ERROR(Text005,Response);
  END;

What about AL?

For now this C/AL Codeunit is not in the standard CRONUS database.  I need to import the C/AL code and make sure that AL will be able to use that Codeunit.  You can see how to do this in my last blog post.

This C/AL Code will directly convert to AL and is ready to use.

          with SoapProxyClientMgt do begin
            CreateSoapProxy(SMSSetup."SOAP URL");
            InitParameters(9);
            SetParameterValue(Username,1);
            SetParameterValue(Password,2);
            SetParameterValue(SenderText,3);
            SetParameterValue(SendTo,4);
            SetParameterValue(SendText,5);
            SetParameterValue('0',6);
            SetParameterValue(false,7);
            SetParameterValue(false,8);
            SetParameterValue('0',9);
            InvokeMethod('SMSWS','sendSMS',TempBlob);
            XmlBuffer.LoadFromText(TempBlob.ReadAsTextWithCRLFLineSeparator);
            if XmlBuffer.FindNodesByXPath(XmlBuffer,'/string') then                        
              Response := XmlBuffer.Value;        
            Success :=  Response = 'SUCCESS';
            if ShowResult and Success then
              MESSAGE(Text001)
            else if ShowResult and not Success then
              ERROR(Text005,Response);
          end;

More examples on how to use this Proxy Codeunit will follow.  Stay tuned…

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C/AL and AL Side-by-Side Development with AdvaniaGIT

Microsoft supports Side-by-Side development for C/AL and AL.  To start using the Side-by-Side development make sure you have the latest version of AdvaniaGIT add-in for Visual Studio Code and update the PowerShell scripts by using the “Advania: Go!” command.

When the Business Central environment is built use the “Advania: Build C/AL Symbol References for AL” to enable the Side-by-Side development for this environment.  This function will reconfigure the service and execute the Generate Symbol References command for the environment.  From here on everything you change in C/AL on this environment will update the AL Symbol References.

So let’s try this out.

I converted my C/AL project to AL project with the steps described in my previous post.  Then selected to open Visual Studio Code in AL folder.

In my new Visual Studio Code window I selected to build an environment – the Docker Container.

When AdvaniaGIT builds a container it will install the AL Extension for Visual Studio Code from that Container.  We need to read the output of the environment build.  In this example I am asked to restart Visual Studio Code before reinstalling AL Language.  Note that if you are not asked to restart Visual Studio Code you don’t need to do that.

After restart I can see that the AL Language extension for Visual Studio Code is missing.

To fix this I execute the “Advania: Build NAV Environment” command again.  This time, since the Container is already running only the NAV license and the AL Extension will be updated.

Restart Visual Studio Code again and we are ready to go.

If we build new environment for our AL project we must update the environment settings in .vscode\launch.json.  This we can do with a built in AdvaniaGIT command.

We can verify the environment by executing “Advania: Check NAV Environment”.  Everything should be up and running at this time.

Since we will be using Side-by-Side development for C/AL and AL in this environment we need to enable that by executing “Advania: Build C/AL Symbol References for AL”.

This will take a few minutes to execute.

Don’t worry about the warning.  AdvaniaGIT takes care of restarting the service.  Let’s download AL Symbols and see what happens.

We can see that AL now recognizes the standard symbols but my custom one; “IS Soap Proxy Client Mgt.” is not recognized.  I will tell you more about this Codeunit in my next blog post.

I start FinSql to import the Codeunit “IS Soap Proxy Client Mgt.”

Import the FOB file

Close FinSql and execute the “AL: Download Symbols” again.  We can now see that AL recognizes my C/AL Codeunit.

Now I am good to go.