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Using Containments and Associations

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Containments and associations are relationships between pages in Business Central. OData web services support navigation between pages using containments and associations.

  • Containments: Some pages in Business Central contain subpages. When you publish such a page, the subpages are automatically available in the web service as containments.

  • Associations: When a field on a page has a TableRelation property, the specified table has a LookupPageId property that points to a different page. When you publish a page containing such a field as a web service, you must also publish the page that is pointed to by LookupPageId property. You can then link from the first page to the second page in a single URI.

Identifying Containments and Associations in Metadata

OData metadata shows containments and associations with the NavigationProperty tag. For example, if you published page 42, Sales Order, and page 22, Customer List, and then obtained the service metadata document for the server instance, you would see this tag in the metadata:

<NavigationProperty Name="SalesOrderSalesLines" ToRole="SalesOrderSalesLines" FromRole="SalesOrder" Relationship="NAV.SalesOrder_SalesOrderSalesLines"/>

This tag is followed by metadata that's specific to the SalesOrderSalesLines subpage. This page metadata indicates that this NavigationProperty tag is a containment:

<EntityType Name="SalesOrderSalesLines">  
<Key>  
     <PropertyRef Name="Document_No"/>  
     <PropertyRef Name="Document_Type"/>  
     <PropertyRef Name="Line_No"/>  
</Key>  
     <Property Name="Document_Type" Nullable="false" Type="Edm.String"/>  
     <Property Name="Document_No" Nullable="false" Type="Edm.String"/>  
     .......many additional properties........  
     <Property Name="ShortcutDimCode_x005B_7_x005D_" Nullable="true" Type="Edm.String"/>  
     <Property Name="ShortcutDimCode_x005B_8_x005D_" Nullable="true" Type="Edm.String"/>  
</EntityType>

These tags describe two associations from the Sales Order page to the Customer List page:

  • The Sell-to Customer No. field.

  • The Bill-to Customer No. field.

Using Containments

When you publish a page that has a subpage, you can identify that subpage in the metadata document that is returned for the published page. For example, when you publish page 42, Sales Order, you can access a single record on the page using a URI such as the following:

https://localhost:7048/<server instance>/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS-International-Ltd.')/SalesOrder(Document_Type='Order',No='101005')/

The following line in the returned metadata document for the record provides link information for a containment:

      <NavigationProperty Name="SalesOrderSalesLines" Type="Collection(NAV.SalesOrderSalesLines)" ContainsTarget="true">
          <ReferentialConstraint Property="No" ReferencedProperty="Document_No"/>
     </NavigationProperty>

To access the subpage data, use a URI that appends the name of the NavigaionalProperty to the link that was identified in the previous document:

https://localhost:7048/<server instance>/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS-International-Ltd.')/SalesOrder(Document_Type='Order',No='101005')/SalesOrderSalesLines

Using Associations

Associations are possible when two published pages are linked. Here is an example:

  • Page 42, Sales Order, has its SourceTable property set to table 36, Sales Header. The source expression for the Sell_to_Customer_No control on page 42 is field 2, Sell-to Customer No., in table 36.

  • Field 2, Sell-to Customer No., in table 36 has a TableRelation property set to table 18, Customer, field No.

  • Table 18, Customer, has a LookupPageId property set to page 22, Customer List.

Thus if both page 42, Sales Order, and page 22, Customer List, are published as web services, then an OData URI can link from the Sell_to_Customer_No control on page 42 to the related entity on page 22.

Because of this association, you can create OData URIs to access data on the Customer List page as you work with data on the Sales Order page.

If you publish pages 42 and 22 as web services, then OData metadata will show additional navigational properties, "Sell_to_Customer_No_Link" and "Bill_to_Customer_No_Link" for the SalesOrder entity.

This information provides the necessary information to create a URI to access a record on the Customer List page by using an association:

https://localhost:7048/<server instance>/ODataV4/Company('CRONUS-International-Ltd.')  
             /SalesOrder(Document_Type='Order',No='101005')/Sell_to_Customer_No_Link

The following URI returns the same information with direct access to the Customer List page:

https://localhost:7048/<server instance>/ODataV4/CustomerList('30000')

OData Web Services