Coffee Stain

A X is very picky about having SOMETHING to do inside of a code block.  For example, the compiler will issue the warning "Empty compound statement." when compiling the following code: boolean bob; try {      //fancy code here } catch { } //warning here If you want to suppress this error, you can call Global::exceptionTextFallThrough() method.  This method does absolutely nothing (right click and go to definition to see for yourself), but it does satisfy the compiler enough to remove the warning. boolean bob; try {      //fancy code here } catch {      //This does nothing but suppress the warning       Global::exceptionTextFallThrough(); }

O n a recent project, I ran into a bit of a "gotcha" today around data replication to the Retail POS in Dynamics Ax 2012 R2.  We had created our own schema in order to transfer customized table data to the POS, however, the data would never be written, no matter what we tried.  Before I get to the solution, fist some background on the new Retail Channel Schema in R2. In R2, Microsoft has moved away from a single schema mentality when synchronizing data to the POS.  It is now utilizing a more flexible multi-schema model.  One of the advantages of this model is to allow AX 2012 R2 to seamlessly communicate with both old and new POS versions without issue.  It does this by defining a schema for each version of the POS.  Out of the box, it looks something like this: Notice there are schemas defined for most version of Dynamics AX (this model doesn't support the POS pre-2009).  This will allow the Retail Scheduler to synchronize data between AX 201...

D ialogs like these are common.  Coding one in X++ is fairly straight forward. public void prompt() {      if (Box::yesNoOnce( "Title" , "Do you want to blah blah" , DialogButton::No, this .name()) == DialogButton::Yes)     {         info( "Do Stuff now" );     } } The trick here is the "Once" of the yesNoOnce method.  This tells AX to show a dialog with the checkmark, and if selected saves the user's choice... somewhere (voodoo magic).  This is all hooked together by the last parameter: str _owner (set to this.name() in the example).  This links the prompt to a key, which can be anything ("bob", "jaffa cake", etc..).  More info can be found in the documentation . The next time the dialog is code is called, the previous selection is honored.  So in the case of the code above, if the user had selected Yes and chose to not be prompt...

Download Source SSRS Browser Fix Installer A while back I was tasked with getting SQL Reporting Services reports rendering in MVC while deployed on the Cloud with Windows Azure, and the reports must render in IE, Firefox and Safari.  The scenario is somewhat similar to trying to ride a bicycle backwards while chewing bubble gum and reciting the last 18 pages of the 2nd volume of War and Peace... in Russian.  I was eventually able to complete the task, though it was not without much hair pulling and profanity.  That solution involved using local reports, an embedded Report Viewer control, and a custom state manager (I may blog about that later if there is any interest). Fast forward to my current project, and Lo And Behold there is a requirement for a cross browser reporting solution using SSRS (though thankfully this time sans Azure).  The difference here is we are able to use the SSRS Reporting Server's Report Viewer as opposed to embedding our own.  Ho...

Download Project Source P age load times are critical to a satisfying user experience.  One of the simplest ways to reduce load times is to Minify your jQuery and Javascript files.  I won't go into detail on how to Minify those files in this post (hint:  http://yui.2clics.net/ ).  Instead, this article deals with the headaches of debugging Minified files. For example, here's a typical Javascript error: However, its impossible to debug this issue because I'm referencing the Minified version of jquery-1.5.1.  I'd have an easier time defusing a small nuclear device.  On the other hand, I don't want to go referencing debug versions of Javascript files throughout my code only to have to do a search and replace every time I want to release. The solution is in MVC's Html Helper classes. The @ Html and  @ HtmlHelper methods are provided to render html controls on the view in a code-centric way.  However, their functionality isn't ...

Download Project Source View Demo Update: I've uploaded a demo page showing grid filters in action.  It can be found here . Q uite often there's a grid or two (or hundred) in a project.  One of the neat thing about jQuery is how simple it is to do some really amazing things, such as filtering grid content based on user input. Take the following example: the above grid has several Employees listed, but the user only wants to see Michael Bolton's information.  With jQuery, it is possible to remove grid rows that don't match the user's selection, with just a few lines of code.  Here's how. First, we create a view page listing the employees.  The key here is to decorate the table rows and cells with CSS classes so our jQuery function will search only where we want it to. Code Snippet < table >          < thead >          < tr > ...

Download Project Source I t seems like every project I'm on has a cascading list requirement.  The problem is common enough: once a value in one list is selected, a second sub-list is populated based on selections from the first.  One of the most common scenarios (as seen above) is selecting a Country, which populates a list of States or Provinces (or Cities for my example). In a recent project, an additional requirement of cascading multi-select lists was needed.  If the user selects multiple values in the first list, the second list should contain all of the sub-selections from all the selections in the first list. Typically in the past, this has been done via post-back to the server to populate the second list.  This has the disadvantage of refreshing the page, which means the user is stuck waiting.  However, in MVC, it is just as simple to use Ajax and Jquery to seamlessly populate the list without interrupting the user experience. First, the mo...