CRM Dynamics SDK how to access related data

Question

I'm using early-bound entities, generated by CrmSvcUtil, and I'm testing the SDK by retrieving an account entity:-

var account = myContext.AccountSet.FirstOrDefault(o => o.Id == Guid.Parse("..."));

(BTW is there an easier way to retrieve an entity by ID?!)

Looking at the account object that is returned, I can see various properties of type OptionSetValue (e.g. "PreferredContactMethodCode"). How do I get the actual item from this OptionSetValue object?

Similarly, there are numerous properties of type EntityReference, which contains an Id and LogicalName (the entity name I presume). How can I populate such a property - is it one of the Get... methods? And do these have to be called separately, or is it possible to "pre-fetch" certain relationships as part of the initial query that retrieves the account entity?

Similarly with the various IEnumerable<> properties (which presumably correspond to 1-M entity relationships), e.g. a property called "opportunity_customer_accounts" of type IEnumerable. How do I populate one of these properties? And (again) does this have to be done as a separate query/method call, or can it be "pre-fetched"?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Retrieve

I'm not really sure how much simpler the retrieve operation could get but for a single record the user of the context is probably overkill. So you could retrieve a specific record where you know directly with the IOrganizationService:

account = service.Retrieve("account", Guid.Parse("..."), new ColumnSet(true));

Option Set Labels

For the OptionSet labels you can look at my answer here: How to get the option set from a field in an entity in CRM 2011 using crm sdk and C#.

If you need the label for multiple OptionSet's on an entity you may want to just retrieve the Entity's metadata once (http://srinivasrajulapudi.blogspot.com/2012/01/retrieve-entity-metadata-in-crm-2011.html):

string entityName ="contact";

// Get the metadata for the currently list's entity
// This metadata is used to create a "Property Descriptor Collection"
RetrieveEntityRequest mdRequest = new RetrieveEntityRequest ( )
{ EntityFilters = EntityFilters.All,
LogicalName = entityName,
RetrieveAsIfPublished = false
};

// Execute the request
RetrieveEntityResponse entityResponse = ( RetrieveEntityResponse ) this.ServiceProxy.Execute ( mdRequest );

EntityMetadata entityData = entityResponse.EntityMetadata;



//To Get Option Set Data
var preferdList= ( entityData.Attributes.Where ( p => p.LogicalName == "preferredcontactmethodcode" ) ).ToList ( ).FirstOrDefault ( ); ;

if ( preferdList != null ) {

PicklistAttributeMetadata optionList= preferdList as PicklistAttributeMetadata;
OptionSetMetadata opValues= optionList.OptionSet;
foreach ( var op in opValues.Options ) {

preferedMethod.Add ( new OptionSet { Value = op.Value.Value, Text = op.Label.LocalizedLabels[0].Label.ToString() } );
}

}

EntityReference() To set an EntityReference typed field:

account.primarycontact = new EntityReference("contact", Guide.Parse("..."));

If they have a value and you requested the column in your ColumnSet() they should be populated, so I'm not really sure I understand your question. If you mean, you want the full record then you need to do a service.Retrieve(...) for the record.

Related Entities (i.e., opportunity_customer_accounts)

This is where using an OrganizationServiceContext makes life easier (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg695791.aspx):

context.LoadProperty(contact, "transactioncurrency_contact");

// read related entity dynamically var currency = contact.GetRelatedEntity("transactioncurrency_contact"); Console.WriteLine(currency.GetAttributeValue("currencyname"));

// read related entity statically var currencyStatic = contact.transactioncurrency_contact; Console.WriteLine(currencyStatic.CurrencyName);

If you are not using an OrganizationServiceContext you can try using a QueryExpression using LinkedEntities, although I've never done this to populate an early-bound entity so I don't know if it works (perhaps someone will add a comment with the answer.)

CRM Dynamics SDK how to access related data

1 Answers1