Webservices in NAV2009

Anyone that has been reading up on NAV2009 cannot have failed to have noticed that NAV can now publish Webservices. I know clever developers have been building Webservices for NAV for a while now, but they have been building them from scratch. NAV2009 gives a simple form where you can expose a Codeunit, or a Page(the new object type used by the .NET client).
One of the examples in the Application Developers Guide publishes a Page built against the Customer Table. The example then goes on to build a simple console app that inserts, Modifies and deletes a customer record, displaying the results between each stage.
Now I know very little C# and the example has a number of bugs in it but even I have managed to get this work and add some very basic error catching in a few hours. One of the devs here told me it would have taken him somewhere between a day and 2 days top achieve the same in the past.

So the example I am talking about.
In NAV open Object Designer and run form 810
Add Page 21 and call it Customer

In Visual Studio 2008 I started a ConsoleApp Project.
I then added a reference to the WebService by Right Clicking Service References and selecting Add Service Reference. I then Clicked the Advanced Button

I then clicked Add Web Reference

I then add the webservice and named it WebService(not very original I know)

Once I had this I could start with the C# Code. Admittedly most of this was copy -  pasted from the example. But as I said there are a few bugs that I had to resolve, plus I wanted some simple error trapping

   1: using System;

   2: using System.Collections.Generic;

   3: using System.Text;

   4:  

   5: namespace ConsoleApplication1

   6: {

   7:    // import newly generated Web service proxy

   8:    using WebService;

   9:   

  10:    class Program

  11:    {

  12:        static void Main(string[] args)

  13:        {

  14:            //create instance of service and setting credentials

  15:            Customer_Service service = new Customer_Service();

  16:            service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;

  17:  

  18:            //create instance of customer

  19:            Customer cust = new Customer();

  20:            cust.Name = "Customer Name";

  21:            //Next line will throw an error. Comment out to get successful passing

  22:            cust.Address = "12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456";

  23:            Msg("Pre Insert");

  24:            PrintCustomer(cust);

  25:           

  26:            //insert customer

  27:            //service.Insert is wrong. Correct and added a Try/Catch for errors

  28:            //service.Insert(ref cust);

  29:            try

  30:            {

  31:                service.Create(ref cust);

  32:            }

  33:            catch (Exception ex)

  34:            {

  35:                Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);

  36:            }

  37:            Msg("Post Insert");

  38:            PrintCustomer(cust);

  39:  

  40:            //create filter for searching for customers

  41:            List<Customer_Filter> filter = new List<Customer_Filter>();

  42:            Customer_Filter nameFilter = new Customer_Filter();

  43:            nameFilter.Field = Customer_Fields.Name;

  44:            nameFilter.Criteria = "C*";

  45:            filter.Add(nameFilter);

  46:  

  47:            Msg("List before modification");

  48:            PrintCustomerList(service, filter);

  49:  

  50:            cust.Name = cust.Name + "Modified";

  51:            //service.Modify is wrong. Correct and added a Try/Catch for errors

  52:            //service.Modify(ref cust);

  53:            try

  54:            {

  55:                service.Update(ref cust);

  56:            }

  57:            catch (Exception ex)

  58:            {

  59:                Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);

  60:            }

  61:  

  62:  

  63:            Msg("Post Modify");

  64:            PrintCustomer(cust);

  65:  

  66:            Msg("List after modification");

  67:            PrintCustomerList(service, filter);

  68:            try

  69:            {

  70:                service.Delete(cust.Key);

  71:            }

  72:            catch (Exception ex)

  73:            {

  74:                Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);

  75:            }

  76:  

  77:  

  78:            Msg("List after deletion");

  79:            PrintCustomerList(service, filter);

  80:  

  81:            Msg("Press [ENTER] to exit program!");

  82:            Console.ReadLine();

  83:        }

  84:  

  85:        static void PrintCustomerList(Customer_Service service, List<Customer_Filter> filter)

  86:        {

  87:            Msg("Printing Customer List");

  88:  

  89:            //conduct the actual search

  90:            //service.Find is wrong. Correct and added a Try/Catch for errors

  91:            //Customer[] list = service.Find(filter.ToArray(), null, 100);

  92:            Customer[] list = service.ReadMultiple(filter.ToArray(), null, 100);

  93:           

  94:            foreach (Customer c in list)

  95:            {

  96:                PrintCustomer(c);

  97:            }

  98:            Msg("End of List");

  99:        }

 100:  

 101:        static void PrintCustomer(Customer c)

 102:        {

 103:            Console.WriteLine("No: {0} Name: {1}", c.No, c.Name);

 104:        }

 105:  

 106:        static void Msg(string msg)

 107:        {

 108:            Console.WriteLine(msg);

 109:        }

 110:    }

 111: }

 112:  

This is an area I think will make my life a lot easier as I get involved in integration projects fairly often. 








As I get more knowledge I'll post up more examples.