Testing Dynamics 365 for Operation Recurring Integrations with Postman

Continuing on the last post, let's do some tests on the D365O recurring integrations with Postman.

Initial setup

We still need the "GetToken" call as before. Please check on the previous post for information on how to set this up.

Next on the D365O data management workspace, we need to create an import and an export projects. To make it simple, let's use the "Customer groups" entity.

Create an import project as usual, and you need to create a sample of import file. Once you click the "Upload" button, then click the "Create recurring data job" button at the top. You will then need to:

• Specify a name
• Specify the application ID, and tick the checkbox beside it
  (This is the client ID that we use in the GetToken call)
• Click the "Set processing recurrence" and set the job recurrence
• Click the "Set monitoring recurrence" and set the monitoring recurrence
• Keep note of the job ID
• Click OK

Next, create an export project as usual. After you click the "Add entity" button, then click the "Create recurring data job" button at the top. You will then to do the same as above.

Send a file to the recurring import job

Open Postman, and execute the "GetToken" call to get the access token. Then create a new POST call with this url https://<axurl>/api/connector/enqueue/<activity id>?entity=<entity name>

Activity ID is the job ID that was displayed when you created the recurring jobs.

Then click on the Body tab, choose Binary, and click the "Choose Files" button to choose the import file. After that just click the "Send" button.

If it's successful, it will return with a job ID and HTTP 200.

You then can inquire the status of the job by doing a GET call to this url: https://<axurl>/api/connector/jobstatus/<activity_id>?jobId=<job_id> 

The result will then show you the job status, including the job started/completed date time and execution logs

Please note that you always need to add the authorisation and the access token in the message header with every call.

Receive a file from the recurring export job

Open Postman, and execute the "GetToken" call to get the access token. Then create a new GET call with this url https://<axurl>/api/connector/dequeue/<activity id>

If it's successful, it will return with a download location and HTTP 200.

Then you'll need to create a new GET call and use the download location as the URL, and then instead of clicking the "Send" button, you'll need to click the "Send and Download" button. Postman will then display a dialog where you can use to select the location where you want the file to be saved.

After downloading the file, you should send an acknowledgement:

https://<axurl>/api/connector/ack/<activity_id>
{
  "CorrelationId": "<CorrelationId>",
  "PopReceipt": "<PopReceipt>",
  "DownloadLocation": "<DownloadLocation>"
}

The body (correlationId, popReceipt, downloadLocation) should be the same as the body from the original dequeue request.

Please note that you always need to add the authorisation and the access token in the message header with every call.

Accessing Dynamics 365 for Operations ODATA services with Postman

Postman is another application that you can use to call ODATA services. The application can do some Javascript scripting, making it more powerful than using Fiddler to call ODATA services.

As before, you will need an application registered through Azure portal so that you'll get a client ID with a client secret key, or a client ID with a username and password.

After that you'll need to download Postman from https://www.getpostman.com/

Open Postman, and if you're going to use your local D365O VM, then you'll need to go to the settings and turn off the "SSL certificate verification".

In Postman, you have something called Environments and Collections. An environment contains settings (ie. credentials) for a particular environment (ie. production, UAT, Dev, or local VM, etc). While a collection contains the ODATA requests. So the idea is you could use requests from any collection against any environment that you have specified.

To create a new environment, click the gear icon on the top right side of the application, then choose the Manage Environments and click the Add button.
Give a name for the new environment, and click the Bulk Edit link. Then type in the environment variables that you want to save.
I use something like:

ClientID:<client_Id>
ClientSecret:<client_secret>
Resource:https://<axurl>
Tenant:https://login.windows.net/<tenant>

You don't have to use the Bulk Edit and just use the table to input the same information, however usually it is faster to gather and format the information in the Bulk Edit mode.

If you don't have a client secret key but have a username and password combination for the client ID, then you can use something like this:

ClientID:<client_Id>
Resource:https://<axurl>
Tenant:https://login.windows.net/<tenant>
username:<username>
password:<password>

Replace those in bold with the valid values and click Add to actually save the new environment.

Get the access token

The next step would be to get the access token to the D365O. There are more than one way to do this, such as using the Postman Get New Access Token function, however I haven't been able to make this work that way. It might be that you'll need to register a new application in the Azure portal and use the specific callback url. If you want to do it that way, please see this post that might be helpful https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/dynamicsnavax/archive/2017/05/23/dynamics-365-for-operation-web-service-calls-with-postman

I'm going to do the old way so that I don't have to do any special thing in the Azure portal. In the main section, make sure you can see a new tab, otherwise click the plus sign.

See the above screenshot, and make the changes on the highlighted parts. Please note that anything in the double curly brackets is referring to a Postman variable. In this case, they are all referring to the variables that we saved in the environment. 

Please also note that we use "No auth" in the authorization tab.

You can click Send button now, and that will get you the access token, however to make things easier for the next request, go to the Tests tab, and enter these codes:

var json = JSON.parse(responseBody);
postman.setEnvironmentVariable("bearerToken", json.access_token);

This pretty much instructs Postman to get the access_token value from the result and store it as an environment variable called bearerToken.

Click the Send button, and make sure that it returns the result with status HTTP 200. After that click the eye icon (the one before the gear icon), and see if it's added the bearerToken there.

You might want to save this request, and add it into a new collection.

Now that we have the access token, let's do some calls to the LedgerJournalHeaders service, similar to what we did in Fiddler before.

Get ledger journal headers

Create a new request, set the action to GET and enter this as the url: {{Resource}}/data/LedgerJournalHeaders

Then go to the Headers tab, and add a new entry with Authorization as the key, and set the value to Bearer {{bearerToken}}

Click the Send button and you'll get the result back. That's quite easy isn't it?

Anytime the token is expired, just open the get token service that you saved before, and run that again.

Insert a new ledger journal header

Create a new request, set the action to POST, and enter this as the url: {{Resource}}/data/LedgerJournalHeaders

Then go to the Headers tab, and add a new entry with Authorization as the key, and set the value to Bearer {{bearerToken}}

Next go to the Body tab and select raw, change the Text selection to JSON (application/json), and enter this:

{
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"JournalName":"GenJrn",
"Description":"Test journal"
}

Click the Send button and you'll get the result back.

Update a ledger journal header

Create a new request, set the action to PATCH, and enter this as the url: {{Resource}}/data/LedgerJournalHeaders(JournalBatchNumber='<journalNumber>',dataAreaId='<dataAreaId>')

Replace that journalNumber and dataAreaId with valid values.

Then go to the Headers tab, and add a new entry with Authorization as the key, and set the value to Bearer {{bearerToken}}

Next go to the Body tab and select raw, change the Text selection to JSON (application/json), and enter this:

{
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"Description":"Edited journal description"
}

Click the Send button and when you'll get status HTTP 204, then that means the request was successful.

Please note that D365O by default will get the values from the integration user's default company, regardless of the dataAreaId that you're actually specifying on the call. If you need to access a record on a different company, then you'll need to add ?cross-company=true

Delete a ledger journal header

Create a new request, set the action to DELETE, and enter this as the url: {{Resource}}/data/LedgerJournalHeaders(JournalBatchNumber='<journalNumber>',dataAreaId='<dataAreaId>')

Replace that journalNumber and dataAreaId with valid values.

Then go to the Headers tab, and add a new entry with Authorization as the key, and set the value to Bearer {{bearerToken}}

Click the Send button and when you'll get status HTTP 204, then that means the request was successful.

Accessing Dynamics 365 for Operations ODATA services with Fiddler

Before you start, you will need to do a new application registration first through Azure portal to get the Client ID and the Client Secret key.

After that, download and install Fiddler from http://www.telerik.com/fiddler

Open Fiddler and go to the Composer [tab] and Options [tab]
Enable "Inspect session" and "Fix content-length header"

Then open the Scratchpad [tab] and paste this

POST https://login.windows.net/<tenant>/oauth2/token HTTP/1.1 
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Host: login.windows.net

resource=https://<axurl>&client_id=<client-id>&client_secret=<client-secret>&grant_type=client_credentials

Replace the <tenant>, <axurl>, <client-id> and <client-secret> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button
The view should be switched to the Inspector [tab] and you can click on the Raw [tab] to see the raw result.
Copy the value of the access_token as you will need this for the subsequent service calls.


If you don't have the client secret key, but you have the username and password, you can use this to get the token:

POST https://login.windows.net/<tenant>/oauth2/token HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Host: login.windows.net

resource=https://<axurl>&client_id=<client-id>&authorityURL=https://login.windows.net/<tenant>&username=<username>&password=<password>&grant_type=password

Replace the <tenant>, <axurl>, <client-id>, <username> and <password> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button
The view should be switched to the Inspector [tab] and you can click on the Raw [tab] to see the raw result.
Copy the value of the access_token as you will need this for the subsequent service calls.

After we get the access token, let's try to call the LedgerJournalHeaders service.

To do a GET call:

GET https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl>

Replace the <axurl> and <access_token> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button.
The view should be switched to the Inspector [tab] and you can click on the JSON [tab] to see the result.

To insert a new journal header:

POST https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl>
{
"@odata.type":"#Microsoft.Dynamics.DataEntities.LedgerJournalHeader",
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"JournalName":"GenJrn",
"Description":"Test journal"
}

Replace the <axurl> and <access_token> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button.
The view should be switched to the Inspector [tab], if the insert is successful then it will return the newly inserted record as the result.

To update a journal header:

PATCH https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders(JournalBatchNumber='<journalNumber>',dataAreaId='<dataAreaId>') HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl>
{
"@odata.type":"#Microsoft.Dynamics.DataEntities.LedgerJournalHeader",
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"Description":"Edited journal description"
}

Replace the <axurl>, <access_token>, <journalNumber> and <dataAreaId> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button.

Please note that D365O by default will get the values from the integration user's default company, regardless of the dataAreaId that you're actually specifying on the call. If you need to access a record on a different company, then you'll need to add ?cross-company=true

If the update is successful then it will return HTTP status 204, otherwise it will return HTTP status 400 with the error message.

To delete a journal header:

DELETE https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders(JournalBatchNumber='<journalNumber>',dataAreaId='<dataAreaId>') HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl>

Replace the <axurl>, <access_token>, <journalNumber> and <dataAreaId> with the valid values, then select/highlight the statements and click the Execute button.

If the update is successful then it will return HTTP status 204, otherwise it will return HTTP status 400 with the error message.

To insert multiple journal headers in one request:

POST https://<axurl>/data/$batch HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=batch_boundary
Accept: multipart/mixed
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl> 

--batch_boundary
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=changeset_boundary 

--changeset_boundary
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-ID: 1
POST https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
{
"@odata.type":"#Microsoft.Dynamics.DataEntities.LedgerJournalHeader",
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"JournalName":"GenJrn",
"Description":"Test journal 1"
} 

--changeset_boundary
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-ID: 2
POST https://<axurl>/data/LedgerJournalHeaders HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
{
"@odata.type":"#Microsoft.Dynamics.DataEntities.LedgerJournalHeader",
"dataAreaId":"USMF",
"JournalName":"GenJrn",
"Description":"Test journal 2"
}

To call an ODATA action:

POST https://<axurl>/data/<EntityPublicCollectionName>([EntityKey])/Microsoft.Dynamics.DataEntities.<ActionName> HTTP/1.1
OData-Version: 4.0
OData-MaxVersion: 4.0
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal
Accept-Charset: UTF-8
Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
Host: <axurl>

As you can see, Fiddler can be used as a simple tool to access the D365O services. I think this is easier and faster than having to build custom codes in Visual Studio to do the calls.

However depending how many tests that you'll need to perform, it can be a bit painful to copy paste the access token values for every call.

Credit to Kalle Sõber on his post http://www.k3technical.com/testing-ax7-odata-services-fiddler/ 

In the next post, I will show how to use Postman to call D365O services. Postman has variable system that makes it easier to do the calls so that you don't have to copy paste the access token, like we did just now with Fiddler.