Create Entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 from SIlverlight

This tutorial will show you how to create an entity record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 using C# in Silverlight.

First things first.  You have to set up your Silverlight app to make a web services connection to CRM.   The best tutorial I have found for this is located here in the MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg594452.aspx

Now once that is done you can create a record in CRM using the following syntax.  In the following example I am creating a record of type "new_testdata", which is a custom entity I have created.

Here is the call in C#:

//note that you need to specify the type of request here
OrganizationRequest request = new OrganizationRequest() { RequestName = "Create" };
Entity entity = new Entity();
entity.LogicalName = "new_testdata";

//One of the biggest things you deal with in SilverLight is the way you work with properties and Attributes
CrmSdk.KeyValuePair<string, object> attName = new CrmSdk.KeyValuePair<string, object>();
attName.Key = "new_name";
attName.Value = "Data - " + DateTime.Now.ToString();
entity.Attributes = new AttributeCollection();
entity.Attributes.Add(attName);

//request properties need to be explicitly named as strings
request["Target"] = entity; 

IOrganizationService service = SilverlightUtility.GetSoapService();

//depending on how you do things your calls will most likely be asynchronous
service.BeginExecute(request, new AsyncCallback(CrmCreate_Callback), service);

Since this is an asynchronous call my callback method "CrmCreate_Callback" that returns the entities Guid from the response looks like this:

private void CrmCreate_Callback(IAsyncResult result)
{
    try
    {
        OrganizationResponse response = ((IOrganizationService)result.AsyncState).EndExecute(result);
        Guid results = (Guid)response["id"];
        
        this.ReportMessage("id: " + results.ToString());
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw ex;
    }
}

You will notice that the biggest change in thinking and syntax will be that you have to specify your request and response properties as strings explicitly in code.

Really though once you understand the differences in working with the two concepts it really isn't a tough nut to crack.