Briefly, Extensible Markup Language (XML) defines a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It allows creating of all kind of structured documents. In Dynamics AX, XML files are widely used across the application. For example, user profiles can be exported as XML files. Business data like financial statements can also be exported as XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) files, which are based on XML.
Probably, the main thing that is associated with XML in Dynamics AX is the Application Integration Framework. It is an infrastructure that allows exposing business logic or exchanging data with other external systems. The communication is done by using XML formatted documents. By using existing XML framework application classes prefixed with Axd, you can export or import data from or to the system in an XML format. It is also possible to create new Axd classes using the AIF Document Service Wizard from the Tools | Development tools | Wizards menu to support exporting and importing newly created tables.
Dynamics AX also contains a set of application classes prefixed with Xml like XmlDocument, and XmlNode. Basically, those classes are wrappers around the System.XML namespace in .NET Framework.
In this recipe to show the principle of XML, we will create a new simple XML document by using the latter classes. We will create the file with the data from the chart of accounts table and will save it as an XML file.
Open AOT and create a new class called CreateXmlFile with the following code. Replace
<documents>with your own path (use double backslashes for folder separation, that is,\\):class CreateXmlFile { } public static void main(Args _args) { XmlDocument doc; XmlElement nodeXml; XmlElement nodeTable; XmlElement nodeAccount; XmlElement nodeName; LedgerTable ledgerTable; #define.filename('<documents>\\accounts.xml') ; doc = XmlDocument::newBlank(); nodeXml = doc.createElement('xml'); doc.appendChild(nodeXml); while select ledgerTable { nodeTable = doc.createElement(tablestr(LedgerTable)); nodeTable.setAttribute( fieldstr(LedgerTable, RecId), int642str(ledgerTable.RecId)); nodeXml.appendChild(nodeTable); nodeAccount = doc.createElement( fieldstr(LedgerTable, AccountNum)); nodeAccount.appendChild( doc.createTextNode(ledgerTable.AccountNum)); nodeTable.appendChild(nodeAccount); nodeName = doc.createElement( fieldstr(LedgerTable, AccountName)); nodeName.appendChild( doc.createTextNode(ledgerTable.AccountName)); nodeTable.appendChild(nodeName); } doc.save(#filename); }
Run the class. The XML file accounts.xml should be created in the specified folder. Open it using Internet Explorer, and review the created XML structure:
We start by creating a new XmlDocument, which represents an XML structure using its newBlank() method. Then we create its root node named xml using createElement(), and add the node to the document by calling the document's appendChild() method.
Next, we go though the LedgerTable table and do the following for each record:
Create a new XmlElement node, which is named exactly as the table name, and add this node to the root node.
Create a node representing the account number field and its child node representing its value. The account number node is created using
createElement(), and its value is created usingcreateTextNode(). ThecreateTextNode()method basically adds a value as text with no XML tags.Add the account number node to the table node.
Create a node representing the account name field and its child node representing its value.
Finally, we save the created XML document as a file.
In this way, we could create documents having virtually any structure.