Part 1 - Consuming custom WCF Data Services (oData) Endpoint (Javascript/jQuery and c#)

The current version of the WCF Data Services 5.0 is working fine if you are in the .NET domain. Accessing with jQuery can cause some issues.

So here is one example using .NET (c#) and a second one using Javascript (jQuery).

If you want to view the final sourcecode, check it out from codeplex.
http://odataconsuming.codeplex.com/

You also can download the final solution as zip-File.
http://odataconsuming.codeplex.com/downloads/get/467041

You can find Part 2 of this documentation here.

Preparation

• Install NuGet
• Install WCF Data Services 5.0

Creating Custom WCF Data Service

• Create new Empty Web Application
• Add Entity Framework (via NuGet)
• Add jQuery (via NuGet)
• Add new Item --> Web --> WCF Data Service (for oData V3)

• Create entity-class

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Data.Services.Common;
 
namespace MK.oDataConsuming.Web {
 
    [DataServiceKey("Id")]
    public class Car {        
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public string Manufacturer { get; set; }
        public string ProductionYear { get; set; }
    }
}

• Create Context

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Data.Entity;
 
namespace MK.oDataConsuming.Web.Model {
    public class CarContext  {
 
        private List<Car> _cars;
 
        public CarContext() {
            _cars = new List<Car>();
            _cars.Add(new Car() { Id = 1, Manufacturer = "BMW", ProductionYear = "1997" });
            _cars.Add(new Car() { Id = 2, Manufacturer = "Mercedes", ProductionYear = "2000" });
            _cars.Add(new Car() { Id = 3, Manufacturer = "Opel", ProductionYear = "2011" });
            _cars.Add(new Car() { Id = 4, Manufacturer = "Ford", ProductionYear = "1999" });
        }
 
        public IQueryable<Car> Cars {
            get {
                return _cars.AsQueryable<Car>();
            }
        }
    }
}

• Configure access rules

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.Services;
using System.Data.Services.Common;
using System.Linq;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
using System.Web;
 
using MK.oDataConsuming.Web.Model;
 
namespace MK.oDataConsuming.Web
{
    public class CarService : DataService<CarContext>
    {
        // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies.
        public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)
        {
            config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Cars", EntitySetRights.All);
            config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V3;
        }
    }
}

• Set .svc as Start Page
• Test Service

Create HTML Test-Page

• Add new Item --> Web --> HTML Page
• Add HTML-Code to file

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title>oData Access</title>
    <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.min.js"></script>
    <script src="Scripts/json2.js"></script>
    <script src="Scripts/odataaccess.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <div>
        <input id="RetrieveButton" type="button" value="Retrieve" onclick="RetrieveData()" />
    </div>
    <div id="listofcars">    
    </div>
</body>
</html>

• Add new Item (to Scripts-Folder) --> Web --> JScript File

• Add Javascript Code to file

//Retrieve data from service
function RetrieveData() {
    $.ajax({
        type: "GET",
        async: false,
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        datatype: "json",
        url: "/CarService.svc/Cars",
        success: RetrieveMultipleCallback,
        error: function () {
            alert("Error");
        },
        beforeSend: function (XMLHttpRequest) {
            XMLHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json;odata=verbose");
        }
    });
}
 
//Handles the RetrieveMultiple Response
function RetrieveMultipleCallback(data) {
    $.each(data.d, function (i, item) {
        var $newDiv = $("<div>" + item.Manufacturer + " - "  + item.ProductionYear + "</div>");

        $("#listofcars").append($newDiv);
    });
}

The Most important part ist the "beforeSend" Handler. Here we set the RequestHeader "Accept: application/json;odata=verbose". In older versions of WCF Data Services, this was "Accept: application/json" This does never work!

• Test the Page

Create Console Application

• Add new Console Project
• Add Service Reference

• Add Code to Program.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
using MK.oDataConsuming.ConsoleApp.CarServiceReference;
 
namespace MK.oDataConsuming.ConsoleApp {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
 
            //Create Service Contexst
            CarContext context = new CarServiceReference.CarContext(new Uri("http://localhost:1184/CarService.svc"));
            
            //Create query, retrieve and convert to list
            var query = context.Cars.Where(c => c.Manufacturer == "Opel");
            List<Car> resultSet = query.ToList();
 
            //Check results
            if (resultSet != null && resultSet.Count > 0) {
                Car opel = resultSet[0];
                Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, {2}", opel.Id, opel.Manufacturer, opel.ProductionYear);
            } else {
                Console.WriteLine("Car not found.");
            }
 
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

• Test the application

Cheers

My First NuGet Package

It's done. And it was quite easy.

There are enough great posts about creating this packages and the complete publishing process. So here are just some links i have used.

• http://docs.nuget.org/
• http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/creating-and-publishing-a-package
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CreatingANuGetPackageIn7EasyStepsPlusUsingNuGetToIntegrateASPNETMVC3IntoExistingWebFormsApplications.aspx
• http://blog.davidebbo.com/2011/04/easy-way-to-publish-nuget-packages-with.html

The most of them explain the creation via the nuget.exe command line application. There is also a nice UI available.

• http://npe.codeplex.com/

Cheers,
Markus

Project - PluginQuickDeploy Update 0.9.0.2

I have created a new version of pqd with minor changes.
Most important part is the NuGet Package.

Project Page: 

http://pqd.codeplex.com/ 

NuGet Package: 

https://nuget.org/packages/PluginQuickDeploy

NuGet Command: 

PM> Install-Package PluginQuickDeploy

Cheers, Markus

CRM 2011 - Accessing and filtering custom/crm WCF Data Service (oData) from sandboxed Plugin

As described in some MSDN-Forums and by Eric Pool, Quering data against the context directly via Linq in sandboxed plugins is not possible. You can retrieve the whole DataSet, but filtering is not possible.

If you need to access and filtering your results from an oData endpoint (also custom ones), you can use the following syntax.

Example OrganizationDataService (with FirstOrDefault):

//Define the Request URI
Guid accountId = new Guid("66BD3ABE-D2CA-E111-9E1F-000C29BDAB09");
string serviceAddress = @"http://crm:5555/DEV/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc/";

string accountQueryByPrimaryKey = string.Format("AccountSet(guid'{0}')", accountId.ToString());

Uri svcUri = new Uri(serviceAddress);
Uri accountUri = new Uri(string.Format("{0}{1}", serviceAddress, accountQueryByPrimaryKey));

 
//Create context and credentials ('My' is the name of the CRM organization, these classes are created when you add a service reference to CRM DataService endpoint)
CrmService.MyContext context = new CrmService.MyContext(svcUri);

context.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domain");

 
//Retrieve data
Account retrievedAccount = context.Execute<Account>(accountUri).FirstOrDefault();

Example Custom Service (with Enumeration):

// Define the Request URI

Uri svcUri = new Uri(@"http://crm:8888/MyDataService/CustomDataService.svc/");

Uri uriAccounts = new Uri(string.Format("{0}{1}", svcUri, "ACCOUNT(3)"));
 

// Create the context

DataServiceContext context = new DataServiceContext(svcUri)

// Enumerate over the query result.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (ACCOUNT account in context.Execute<ACCOUNT>(uriAccounts)) {
    sb.AppendLine("Name: " + account.name);
}

The trick is to use the oData (URI) for Filtering and to interprete just the results.

You can find the MSDN description here.