Category: Dynamics 365

This week I had to differentiate between normal entities and activities in Javascript. I had a look into the SDK and remembered my previous post “Get EntitySetName from Metadata“. A little modification and I get true or false from the ‘isActivity’ information in the metadata.

Here it is fo you: Get isActivity from Metadata

function isActivity(strEntityLogicalName)
{
    var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
    req.open("GET", Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl() + "/api/data/v8.0/" +
        "EntityDefinitions(LogicalName='" + strEntityLogicalName + "')?$select=IsActivity", false);
    req.setRequestHeader("OData-MaxVersion", "4.0");
    req.setRequestHeader("OData-Version", "4.0");
    req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
    req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
    req.onreadystatechange = function ()
    {
        if (this.readyState === 4)
        {
            req.onreadystatechange = null;
            if (this.status === 200)
            {
                var result = JSON.parse(this.response);
                var isActivity = result.IsActivity;
            }
        }
    };
    req.send();
}

Everybody who has worked with the Web Api, in the system formerly known as Dynamics CRM (honestly, I do not know how to call it now), must have notice that you can’t pass the EntityLogicalName to it. It expects the EntitySetName, which is a kind of plural name for the entity.
Not to be confused with the plural display name you can configure in the entity.

So far I had a little Javascript function that tried to imitade the rules wich are responsible for the generation of the EntitySetName. But since there can be some exceptions, I’m now the opinion that it would be more reliable to query the metadata directly from the system.

Here it is: Get EntitySetName from Metadata

function getEntitSetName(strEntityLogicalName)
{
    var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
    req.open("GET", Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl() + "/api/data/v8.2/" +
        "EntityDefinitions(LogicalName='" + strEntityLogicalName + "')?$select=EntitySetName", false);
    req.setRequestHeader("OData-MaxVersion", "4.0");
    req.setRequestHeader("OData-Version", "4.0");
    req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
    req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
    req.onreadystatechange = function ()
    {
        if (this.readyState === 4)
        {
            req.onreadystatechange = null;
            if (this.status === 200)
            {
                var result = JSON.parse(this.response);
                return result.EntitySetName;
            }
            else
            {
                return null;
            }
        }
    };
    req.send();
}