A short example how to autenticate and talk to web based API from x++

The code below is divided into two pieces/methods just to ease how to do things. One that authenticates to an API and the other one takes the authentication token and adds it to the call. The examples below maybe don’t fit your scenario due to all API are different but the procedure is almost the same.

void authentication() 
{
	str                 rawResponse;
	Map                 responseData;
	RetailWebResponse   response;
	;
	
	//URL to the API, Data, Header data, ContentType: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
	response = webApi.makePostRequest([URL], @'grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=[clientId]', [Header], [ContentType]);
	
	if(response.parmHttpStatus() != 200)
		throw error("Couldnt authenticate");

	rawResponse = response.parmData();
	responseData = RetailCommonWebAPI::getMapFromJsonString(rawResponse);
	
	token = responseData.lookup("access_token");
}

In this example below, we got our response back as an ARRAY. we remove the ARRAY tags and with that, the call is translated into JSON.

private void call()
{
	RetailWebRequest    webRequest;
	RetailWebResponse   response;
	str                 rawResponse, ref;
	Map                 responseData;
	;

	webApi = RetailCommonWebAPI::construct();

	//URL to get data
	webRequest = RetailWebRequest::newUrl([URL]);
	
	//Send token through JSON GET call
	webRequest.parmHeader(@'Authorization: Bearer '+token);
	webRequest.parmContentType("application/json");
	webRequest.parmMethod("GET");

	response = webApi.getResponse(webRequest);

	if(response.parmHttpStatus() != 200)
		throw error("No data is returned");
	
	rawResponse = substr(response.parmData(),2,(strlen(response.parmData())-2));
	
	responseData = RetailCommonWebAPI::getMapFromJsonString(rawResponse);

	ref         = responseData.lookup("ref");
}

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Just found a strange behaviour in using the standard str2enum function. Consider the following code ;

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static void TestOfEnumsWithFirstValueBlank(Args _args)
{
    ProjCategoryType selectedType;
    str              s;
    ;
 
    selectedType = ProjCategoryType::None;
    s = enum2str(selectedType); // get enum string
    print s; // shows nothing, since None has no label.
 
    selectedType = str2enum(selectedType,s); // convert back
 
    if(selectedType == ProjCategoryType::None)
        print "'None' selected";
    else
        print "undefined..."; // sadly this is printed..
 
    pause;
}

This example code prints undefined, NOT ‘None’ selected. This because str2enum does not handle an empty string in a correct way, even if one of the values in the choosen enum has the emptry string as it’s label. This means values to str2enum must always be validated first before each call..

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Have you searched the net for how to store documents in an AX table? I did, a lot.. When I couldn’t find it, I had to do it myself 😉 Here is a short description on how to store, download and edit documents from AX in Office (or any..) program.

Continue reading How to store and retrieve an Office document from/to an AX table. →

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