Doens.be

Normally when you change your language you go to your user options, change your current language and the restart the client. This week I got the question if it was possible to do so in runtime. You can do so by just calling the infolog.language(str 7 _languageCode). All labels that you load after calling this method will be translated to the new language. (more…)

This week one of my customers asked me to place the amount in words on a invoice. I couldn’t believe that sush function wasn’t availible in standard Ax. After some research I found that the Global-class contains the following methods:

• static TempStr numeralsToTxt(real _num)
• static TempStr numeralsToTxt_EN(real _num)
• static TempStr numeralsToTxt_ES(real _num)
• static TempStr numeralsToTxt_FR(real _num)
• static TempStr numeralsToTxt_NL(real _num)

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This is a discussion I had with several colleagues. What is the difference between index and index hint and what do we use in our code?

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When you quickly want to test some code I often write some test-code in a small job. When you execute the code in this job, it will be executed on client-side. A colleague of mine asked me if he could test the same job while running on server-side.

Wen you quickly want to test the same code when it is running on server side, you can simply create a action-menu item from this job and change the property ‘RunOn‘ property to ‘Server‘. Now when you execute the menu item, the job will be executed on server.

There is a simple trick to loop all tables that are available in Ax. Just use the Dictionary-class that contains all information about tables.

Small example to list all tablenames + their corresponding Id.

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static void JeDoe_listTables(Args _args)
{
    Dictionary  dictionary = new Dictionary();
    int         i;
    ;
    for (i=1 ; i<=dictionary.tableCnt() ; i++)
    {
        info(strfmt('%1;%2', dictionary.tableCnt2Id(i), tableid2name( dictionary.tableCnt2Id(i) )));
    }
}

When you combine this with a DictTable / DictField-object, there are lots of possibilities.

I was using the postload method of the HRMBenefitType-table to fill the description-field with language-sensitive description (from LanguageTxt). This works fine when I view the record, but not when I use a lookup.

I’ve put a break-point on my postload method and noticed the recId (this.recid of the HRMBenefitType table). This is always the 101090. When I check this in the tablebrowser, this does not match the actual RecId valule.
I checked the SQL-trace-log and noticed the following instruction:

SELECT A.HRMBENEFITTYPEID,A.DESCRIPTION,A.RECVERSION,101090 FROM HRMBENEFITTYPE A WHERE (DATAAREAID=?) ORDER BY A.DATAAREAID,A.HRMBENEFITTYPEID OPTION(FAST 1)

The solution to this problem is simple. Just change the CacheLookup property to EntireTable and the strange behaviour of the RecId-field stops.

One of my colleagues (Koen Dedecker) was looking for a way to prevent user interaction with other forms while a certain dialog is shown. After some research he found the solution on the blog Dynamics AX tools and tutorials from Vanya Kashperuk. A few years ago (2007) he made a simple extension of the dialog class that makes this possible. You can find more information and download some code samples on http://kashperuk.blogspot.com/2007/06/3-dialog-extensions.html.

The trick is actually simple:

• Create a new variable of the type Boolean en the classDeclaration of the Dialog-class
• Create a public parm method for this new variable to get/set the value
• Extend the wait-method by placing the following code before the close-statement:

  dialogform.formRun().wait(this.parmShowModal());

Now when you make a new instance of the dialog class just set the value of the parmShowModal() to true. From now on this dialog will stay on top.

• When you declare a buffer of a record of temporary table type, the table does not contain any values.
• Memmory and filespace aren’t allocated for a temporary table till the first record is inserted. This means that you have to watch out for client/server problems.
  When the first record is inserted in a buffer on the client tier, the memory is allocated there. All actions (insert / update / delete) to this buffer will run trough that tier, so try to reduce round-trips and improve your performance.
• When you declare 2 different buffers of the same temporary table, they will both have a life of their own. To share the date between the tables use the setTmpData method.
  for example: tmpCommonBuffer1.setTmpData(tmpCommonBuffer2);
• You can’t (normally) set up logging on temporary tables.
• Use the method isTmp() to know if a record is temporary or not (true –> temporary, false –> phisical)

My opinion: Temporary tables are very useful and can help you to easily manipulate data you don’t need store permanently, but watch out where and how you use them.

Wel all know the small dialog that gives the user usefull information about what is happening in Ax. In this post I will tell u some more about this.

You can add information to the Infolog by calling:

• Infolog.add(…)
• info(…)
• warning(…) or checkfailed(…)
• error(…)
• You can add some structure in it by using setPrefix(…)
• Using the Proxy-class for the Enterprise Portal

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In one of my previous posts I explained that you can switch company with the keyword changecompany. I also made a remark that you should set the value of your table-value to null after each changecompany.

Small code example (bad):

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DataArea dataArea;
PurchTable purchTable;
;
while select dataArea
where !dataArea.isVirtual
{
    changecompany(dataArea.id)
    {
        select firstonly purchTable;
        info(strfmt("%1 (%2)", purchTable.purchId, purchTable.dataAreaId));
    }
}

The result is:

You can clearly see that the table variable is is known in the company you declared it.

Small code example (good):

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DataArea dataArea;
PurchTable purchTable;
;
while select dataArea
where !dataArea.isVirtual
{
    changecompany(dataArea.id)
    {
        purchTable = null;
        select firstonly purchTable;
        info(strfmt("%1 (%2)", purchTable.purchId, purchTable.dataAreaId));
    }
}

The result:

So by making this small code change it runs perfectly.

NOTE: When you are calling a new method in the changecompany statement, you don’t have to set all the common variables that you declare  equal to ‘null’. This because they are declared after the companychange.