Creating and interacting with an OData V4 unbound action
Unbound actions represent reusable operations that you can perform using an OData request. Use unbound actions when there is no particular entity that the action needs to be bound to.
Using OData V4 unbound actions to migrate from SOAP to OData
One common use case for using SOAP endpoints with Business Central is to expose an AL method to be callable as a web service. The same thing can be achieved by using OData V4 unbound actions as described in this article.
Declaring, registering, and publishing the OData unbound action
To declare an OData unbound action define a codeunit with a procedure with the desired business logic.
The following example illustrates a simple codeunit with three procedures that can be exposed as a web service and called as OData unbound actions.
codeunit 50100 "MiscOperations"
{
procedure Ping(input: Integer): Integer
begin
exit(-input);
end;
procedure Delay(delayMilliseconds: Integer)
begin
Sleep(delayMilliseconds);
end;
procedure GetLengthOfStringWithConfirmation(inputJson: Text): Integer
var
c: JsonToken;
input: JsonObject;
begin
input.ReadFrom(inputJson);
if input.Get('confirm', c) and c.AsValue().AsBoolean() = true and input.Get('str', c) then
exit(StrLen(c.AsValue().AsText()))
else
exit(-1);
end;
}
Registering and publishing the codeunit as a web service
Registering and publishing the codeunit is identical to how you work with other web services. For more information, see Publish a Web Service.
Verifying web service availability
HTTP request
To call specific procedure on a codeunit use the base OData URL for the codeunit and procedure name separated by an underscore.
POST /ODataV4/{serviceName}_{procedureName}?company={companyName|companyId} HTTP/1.1
{requestBody}
Request headers
Header | Value |
---|---|
Authorization | Bearer {token}. Required. |
Example request
POST {baseUrl}/ODataV4/MyOperations_GetLengthOfStringWithConfirmation?company=CRONUS%20USA%20Inc. HTTP/1.1
{
"inputJson": "{\"str\":\"Hello world!\",\"confirm\":true}"
}
Example response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
{
"@odata.context": "{baseUrl}/ODataV4/$metadata#Edm.Int32",
"value": 12
}
Related information
AL development environment
Creating and interacting with an OData V4 bound action
Getting started with Microsoft .NET interoperability from AL
Devoloping for multiple platform versions
Exporting permission sets
Discover events using the Event Recorder