This walkthrough focuses on publishing a Microsoft Dynamics NAV page as a SOAP web service and then using it in a Visual Studio 2012 console application. When you publish a page as a web service, you expose a default set of operations for managing common record-handling tasks to developers. The walkthrough shows how to use some of these operations. Compare this walkthrough with Walkthrough: Creating and Interacting with a Page Web Service (OData).

About This Walkthrough

This walkthrough provides an overview of how to publish a page as a web service and then interact with data from that page in a Visual Studio console application. This walkthrough uses a SOAP web service, although you can also create an OData web service to interact with page data. The walkthrough illustrates the following tasks:

  • Publishing an existing page as a web service.
  • Verifying the web service availability from a browser.
  • Using the web service in a Visual Studio console application.
  • Making calls to the Create, Read, Update, and Delete functions on a page web service.

Prerequisites

To complete this walkthrough, you will need:

  • Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 with a developer license.
  • CRONUS International Ltd. demonstration database.
  • Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2010, or Visual Studio 2008. You can use any edition of Visual Studio that supports adding web references. In this walkthrough, you will use Visual Studio 2012. You also have the option of using service references instead of web references, or of using the web service proxy generating tools svcutil.exe and wsdl.exe, which are included in the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK.

Publishing a Page as a Web Service

You publish a web service using the RoleTailored client.

To publish a page as a web service

  1. Open the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client, and then connect to the CRONUS International Ltd. company.

  2. In the Search box, enter Web Services, and then press Return.

  3. In the Web Services page, choose New.

  4. In the Object Type column, select Page, and then enter 21 in the Object ID column and Customer in the Service Name column.

  5. Mark the check box in the Published column.

  6. Choose OK to close the New - Web Services page.

Verifying Web Services Availability

Note
After publishing a web service, verify that the port that web service applications will use to connect to your web service is open. The default port for SOAP-based web services is set to 7047. You can configure this value by using the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Administration Tool.

To verify availability of a Microsoft Dynamics NAV web service

  1. Start Windows Internet Explorer.

  2. In the Address field, enter an address of the following type: http://<Server>:<WebServicePort>/<ServerInstance>/WS/<CompanyName>/services. For example:

    http://localhost:7047/ DynamicsNAV90/WS/CRONUS%20International%20Ltd./services

    Note
    The company name is case-sensitive.

    The browser should now show the web service that you have published:

     Copy Code
    <contractRef xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/disco/scl/" ref="http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV90/WS/CRONUS International Ltd/Page/Customer"/>

Calling the Web Service

In this walkthrough we use Visual Studio 2012 to call and use the web service.

To call the web service

  1. In Visual Studio, on the File menu, point to New, and then choose Project.

  2. Expand the Visual C# node, select Windows, and then, under Visual Studio installed templates, select Console Application. Enter the name PrintCustomerList for the application.

    Important
    The sample code in this walkthrough expects this exact application name, so you should not change it.

  3. Choose OK to close the New Project page.

  4. In Solution Explorer, right-click References in the project, and then choose Add Service Reference.

  5. Choose the Advanced button, choose the Add Web Reference button, type or paste the URL that you used when you checked the WSDL, such as http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV90/WS/Services, and then choose Go.

  6. When the Customer service is displayed, choose View Service, rename localhost to WebService, and then choose Add Reference.

  7. On the Program.cs tab, replace the existing code with the following code:

    C# Copy Code
    using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
namespace PrintCustomerList
{
    // Import newly generated web service proxy.
    using WebService; 
    
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Creates instance of service and sets credentials.
            Customer_Service service = new Customer_Service();
            service.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
            // Creates instance of customer.
            Customer cust = new Customer();
            cust.Name = "Customer Name";
            Msg("Pre Create");
            PrintCustomer(cust);
            
            // Inserts customer.
            service.Create(ref cust);
            Msg("Post Create");
            PrintCustomer(cust);
            // Creates filter for searching for customers.
            List<Customer_Filter> filterArray = new List<Customer_Filter>();
            Customer_Filter nameFilter = new Customer_Filter();
            nameFilter.Field = Customer_Fields.Name;
            nameFilter.Criteria = "C*";
            filterArray.Add(nameFilter);
            Msg("List before modification");
            PrintCustomerList(service, filterArray);
            cust.Name = cust.Name + "Updated";
            service.Update(ref cust);
            Msg("Post Update");
            PrintCustomer(cust);
            Msg("List after modification");
            PrintCustomerList(service, filterArray);
            service.Delete(cust.Key);
            Msg("List after deletion");
            PrintCustomerList(service, filterArray);
            Msg("Press [ENTER] to exit program!");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
        // Prints list of filtered customers.
        static void PrintCustomerList(Customer_Service service, List<Customer_Filter> filter)
        {
            Msg("Printing Customer List");
            
            // Runs the actual search.
            Customer[] list = service.ReadMultiple(filter.ToArray(), null, 100);
            foreach (Customer c in list)
            {
                PrintCustomer(c);
            }
            Msg("End of List");
        }
        static void PrintCustomer(Customer c)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("No: {0} Name: {1}", c.No,c.Name);
        }
        static void Msg(string msg)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(msg);
        }
    }
}

  8. On the Build menu, select Build Solution to build your project and then, from the Debug menu, choose Start Debugging to run the application in debug mode. You should now see a console window that prints a list of customers from the CRONUS International Ltd. company. One customer in the list is created, then is modified, and is finally deleted.

See Also