Tag: Windows Client

We do have one Mr. Singelton in our Dynamics NAV MVP group.  However, this blog post is not about him.

Singelton is a well known Design Pattern.  A Singelton object is a one instance object that is shared in the whole application.  Vjeko showed an example of this in his recent post.

With a Singelton class it is possible to store values that can later be retrieved by another call not related to the first.

It is common practise in Dynamics NAV to create a single-instance Codeunit to keep data that needs to be accessible from all processes within the user session.  A Singelton class is common for all user sessions on the server.

The example Vjeko talks about it that you can store data in a Singelton class to implement a state information into an otherwise stateless web service.

In a recent post I talked about a Variable Store Codeunit.  That was a single-instance Codeunit where I used the DotNet Dictionary to store and retrieve values.  This worked well inside a single user session.

I wanted to make a similar functionalilty available as a Singelton class that would be common for all sessions.  The class code is in c#

[code lang=”csharp”]using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace SingeltonDictionary
{
public class SingeltonDictionary
{
private static SingeltonDictionary instance;
private Dictionary<string, string=""> NavDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string="">();

private SingeltonDictionary() { }

public static SingeltonDictionary Instance
{
get
{
if (instance == null)
{
instance = new SingeltonDictionary();
}
return instance;
}
}
public bool AddToDictionary(string KeyName, string Value)
{
if (NavDictionary.ContainsKey(KeyName))
return false;
else
{
NavDictionary.Add(KeyName, Value);
return true;
}
}
public void AddReplaceInDictionary(string KeyName, string Value)
{
ClearFromDictionary(KeyName);
NavDictionary.Add(KeyName, Value);
}
public bool ClearFromDictionary(string KeyName)
{
if (NavDictionary.ContainsKey(KeyName))
{
NavDictionary.Remove(KeyName);
return true;
}
else
return false;
}
public bool GetFromDictionary(string KeyName, ref string Value)
{
return NavDictionary.TryGetValue(KeyName,out Value);
}
public void ClearDictionary()
{
NavDictionary.Clear();
}
}
}
[/code]

The Singelton Dictionary NAV add-in can be downloaded here -> Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.SingeltonDictionary

There is another reason why I wanted to create this add-in.  I have a solution for the Windows Client to be able to easily create textboxes and buttons for a NAV Page.  One of the problems with this add-in can be solved with a Singelton class.

The solution has a Panel Class that is built when the add-in is initiated on the page.  On top of that panel any number of buttons and textboxes are added dynamically.  To support this the panel has the autosize property set and will resize as needed.

The problem is that you can’t start to add things to the panel until it has been initiated and at that time NAV draws the page and decides how much space is needed for the panel.  At the time NAV decides the panel is empty and therefore no space is allocated for the panel.

It is not possible to change a property or call a method on the add-in until the add-in is ready and the page has been created.  So, here I solve this by using the Singelton class.  I make the Singelton add-in a reference in the Buttons & TextBoxes add-in and the Singelton class can be accessed the whole time.

In my NAV Page I added the Singelton NAV add-in as a client-side DotNet variable and added three lines of Singelton code.

Similar in my Buttons & TextBoxes add-in I added two properties to read these Singelton values.

When the panel is created I make sure that I read these properties.

It is important to use the XML format in NAV when using this Singelton Dictionary.  Make sure to always use FORMAT(<value>,0,9) and on the other side use EVALUATE(<value>,SingeltonValue,9).