Interfaces

Read more about the article What’s new about interfaces in 2021 Wave 1

What’s new about interfaces in 2021 Wave 1

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 Release Wave 1 is out (whoa, that was a mouthful) with some new perks for developers. Today, I had another live session at http://vjeko.live, and I made it both the first one in the series of What’s New for the latest release, as well as the episode four of Fun with Interfaces.

Interfaces are such an amazing feature in AL language, that was long missed, and that’s now saving my day nearly every time I do something with AL. The latest AL compiler (runtime “7.0”) comes with these new interesting features about interfaces:

  • You can mark interfaces for obsoletion.
  • You can mark individual interface functions for obsoletion.
  • You can return interfaces as return type from functions.
  • You can define UnknownValueImplementation for enums to specify the interface that represents any unknown enum values.

Let’s take a look at each one of those with examples.

Continue ReadingWhat’s new about interfaces in 2021 Wave 1
Read more about the article Resident control add-ins – no SingleInstance

Resident control add-ins – no SingleInstance

  • Reading time:10 mins read

My last topic was resident control add-ins. In my video and written blog I’ve explained what they are and how you can quickly have them up and running. However, there was one particular thing I said I generally don’t like – single-instance codeunits. So my second blog on this topic focuses precisely on that: how to make your control add-in available to your AL code from everywhere, without having to rely on a single-instance codeunit.

Continue ReadingResident control add-ins – no SingleInstance

A couple of ideas for HttpClient

  • Reading time:11 mins read

When invoking any REST web services, a lot of AL code mostly looks like this:

procedure CallRESTFoo()
var
    Client: HttpClient;
    Response: HttpResponseMessage;
    Body: Text;
    Json: JsonObject;
begin
    Client.Get('https://foo.bar/', Response);
    Response.Content.ReadAs(Body);
    Json.ReadFrom(Body);
    // Process JSON body of the response...
end;

Of course, there are more things there, like headers or perhaps calling HTTP POST (or another method) instead of GET, but when you strip it down to the bones, the chunk above is what remains.

Today’s post is a follow up for my HttpClient Patterns live session on http://vjeko.live/ and as I promised, I am providing the text-only version for those who prefer reading to watching.

Continue ReadingA couple of ideas for HttpClient
Read more about the article Fun with Interfaces: Testing

Fun with Interfaces: Testing

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Oh how much fun we had today on my live stream, it’s just amazing. First, all the viewers had fun of waiting for me to go live for nearly an hour, and then at some point I managed to unplug my reflector. Perks of live streaming 😁

First of all, I would like to – once again – apologize to everyone who waited for me to go live. I’ll explain in the end of this blog what really happened. For now, let’s go on-topic.

Continue ReadingFun with Interfaces: Testing
Read more about the article Fun with Interfaces

Fun with Interfaces

  • Reading time:1 min read

Today I’ve streamed the Fun with Interfaces video blog at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMHL32c5mg and the recording is now published online.

This was the first session I ever delivered about interfaces, and I actually planned delivering this a lot earlier (I made a suggestion to run this at Directions ASIA before corona crisis hit), but never had a chance. I now polished the demos a bit and delivered it as-is (no slides, really, so – no theory, just practice).

I will have more to say on interfaces, definitely. Stuff like dependency injection, inversion of control, testability, etc. is all very interesting to discuss and very useful in our daily life with AL.

My today’s session not only shows what you can do with interfaces, but also what you cannot, and why. Maybe, who knows, at some point we get some improvements to address some of pain points from my video.

Thanks to everyone who joined me today, and I am looking forward to see all you next week in “Making InvokeExtensibilityMethod work” session.

Continue ReadingFun with Interfaces

I had a dream: decoupled NAV

  • Reading time:15 mins read

You know about PRS (Partner Ready Software), don’t you? It’s the initiative started by Mark Brummel, Eric Wauters (Waldo), and Gary Winter (not necessarily in this order), and then they decided to expand their team by one more member. I am not quite sure if this was a good move, but the time will tell. It always does.

The main goal of the initiative is to enable you to customize NAV in a repeatable way. Repeatability is kind of a buzzword, but PRS doesn’t just buzz the word. PRS believes repeatability is the key. Today maybe you don’t care about repeatability. In two years, or latest five, you’ll want to go back and rethink your angle. PRS wants you to rethink now.

One way of getting repeatable customizations is through patterns. There are patterns, all over NAV, that repeat, time after time, over and again. Agosto dopo agosto dopo agosto dopo agosto as Jovanotti would put it. Pun intended. When a pattern repeats itself, it’s repetition, not repeatability. There is a big difference between them, big as a house. To get repeatable, is to get rid of repetition. Instead of having essentially the same piece of code all over the place with a hint of Goldberg Variations, how about having it only once, in a single place?

Like, having one place where you assign a number from a number series to any master record, document, journal, you name it. Instead of at least—let me guess—120 different places in about as many objects. Then, if you want to customize one small aspect of it, you just touch that one single place. You can then repeat the same customization for hundreds of customers, not only surviving the version upgrade, but making it (the upgrade) an essential, non-disruptive, piece-of-cakeish part of your service offering. That’s the repeatability that PRS is all about.

But—there is always a but—the way NAV is today, we are a long way from this kind of repeatability. A long and painful way away.

That’s why I had a dream. I know it’s only a dream because to make NAV do what I am about to share here would be to downright rearchitect it from the core. But I’ll share it nonetheless. Keep reading.

Continue ReadingI had a dream: decoupled NAV