If you followed my last two posts, you’ll know some basics of what SData is and how to get it to use in your projects. In this post, we will take this a step further and look at how to actually use it, starting with how to query data from SalesLogix.
Getting a list of Contacts
Let’s start with a basic query. For this example, we will retrieve all contacts whose last name starts with ‘Ab’. Take a look at the code (with comments to walk through each part)
using Sage.SData.Client.Core; using Sage.SData.Client.Atom; using Sage.SData.Client.Extensions; //... // All requests require an ISDataService which provides // the service location and user authentication values ISDataService svc = new SDataService("http://localhost/sdata/slx/dynamic/-/", "lee", ""); // Now create the request, passing in the ISDataService we created // above var req = new SDataResourceCollectionRequest(svc); // Tell it which kind of resource we want to access, in this case // Contacts. Note, this needs to match the values on the SData tab // of the entity in Application Architect req.ResourceKind = "Contacts"; // This part is optional (without it we'd be getting ALL contacts). // This is our where clause, or condition of which contacts we want. // In this example we want all contacts whose last name starts with // the value 'Ab'. We need to use the exact property name as defined // in the entity (case-sensitive). req.QueryValues.Add("where", "LastName like 'Ab%'"); // Now read the data (or run the query) AtomFeed feed = req.Read(); // We now have the results in our AtomFeed variable, which is // basically a list of AtomEntry objects. To get to our data, // we need to read the payload from each AtomEntry and then we // can access the values for each field from it's Values // dictionary. In this example, we'll just write a few fields // from each contact to the console. foreach (AtomEntry entry in feed.Entries) { // Get the payload for this entity SDataPayload payload = entry.GetSDataPayload(); // Now read some values from the payload. Note, the // property names you use here need to match the property // names defined for the entity (these are case-sensitive). string account = payload.Values["AccountName"].ToString(); string contactName = payload.Values["NameLF"].ToString(); string title = payload.Values["Title"].ToString(); Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1} from {2}", contactName, account, title); } |
That’s not too bad. You do have to access the fields by string name, which means you don’t get intellisense, but at least it’s easy code to write. There are ways to retrieve the schema for an entity which I will look at in a future post.
Hi Ryan, here’s the documentation excerpt where i find the code:
Handling Errors
Normal Mode
1. Construct an ISDataService passing in the SData provider URL
ISDataService a = new SDataService(
“http://localhost/sdata/aw/dynamic/-/”, “lee”, “”);
NOTE: The URL can be passed in or the individual properties of the URL can be set.
2. Construct a SDataSingleResourceRequests passing in the ISDataService
var b = new SDataSingleResourceRequest(a);
var c = new SDataSingleResourceRequest(a);
var d = new SDataSingleResourceRequest(a);
var e = new SDataSingleResourceRequest(a);
3. Setup the Resource Selectors and payloads for create and update
See – Create, Read, Update, Delete Single Resource
4. Wrap the calls to Create, Read, Update and Delete in a try-catch block which catches exceptions of type SDataServiceException
try
{
b.Create();
c.Read();
d.Update();
e.Delete();
}
catch (SDataServiceException e)
{
string errorMessage = e.Diagnosis.Message;
}