Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Search for Matching Text in the Body of a KB Article in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using .NET or Jscript

This illustration shows how to search for matching text in the body of a Knowledge Base (KB) article in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest.   This example will be given in Jscript (SOAP) and in C# (.NET).

This call was another one of my mysteries from last week, http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/09/mysteries-of-crm-2011-sdk-part-1.html  , Mitch Milam (MVP) solved this one for me first.  I have embellished by adding a jscript example and playing with the C# syntax a bit to fit my style.  Props also go out to Jevjenij again as he also provided a comparable solution after the fact.

Additionally, here are some of the notes Mitch left:
  • SubjectId is indeed required and must be the Id of a real Subject.
  • It looks like an ‘*’ is used for wildcard searches within the SearchText field. 
    • It would appear that without the wildcard, only whole words are considered.
  •  The QueryExpression seems to be used to determine the columns for the resultset. 
    • You may wish to make a note of that. It is very confusing otherwise to have a SearchText field and a QueryExpression.
    •  I have not attempted to add a FilterExpression but I suspect it will not work.
  •  UseInflection is not required - but it does indeed work just the way the documentation says.
Ok, here is what the code looks like!
First in C#:

SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest req = new SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest();
req.SubjectId = new Guid("3B200FE0-6D96-4E7B-9DDF-FD1A6DF801E5");
req.SearchText = "dolphins";
QueryExpression qe = new QueryExpression();
qe.EntityName = KbArticle.EntityLogicalName;
qe.ColumnSet = new ColumnSet(true);
req.QueryExpression = qe;

SearchByBodyKbArticleResponse resp = (SearchByBodyKbArticleResponse)slos.Execute(req);


If you need help instantiating a service object in .NET within a plugin check out this post:
http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/04/instantiating-service-object-within.html

Now here is the Jscript nicely formatted by the CRM 2011 SOAP formatter. Available at: http://crm2011soap.codeplex.com/

Now in Jscript


This example is asynchronous, if you want to learn how to make JScript SOAP calls synchronously please visit this posthttp://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-jscript-to-access-soap-web.html


if (typeof (SDK) == "undefined")
   { SDK = { __namespace: true }; }
       //This will establish a more unique namespace for functions in this library. This will reduce the 
       // potential for functions to be overwritten due to a duplicate name when the library is loaded.
       SDK.SAMPLES = {
           _getServerUrl: function () {
               ///<summary>
               /// Returns the URL for the SOAP endpoint using the context information available in the form
               /// or HTML Web resource.
               ///</summary>
               var OrgServicePath = "/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web";
               var serverUrl = "";
               if (typeof GetGlobalContext == "function") {
                   var context = GetGlobalContext();
                   serverUrl = context.getServerUrl();
               }
               else {
                   if (typeof Xrm.Page.context == "object") {
                         serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl();
                   }
                   else
                   { throw new Error("Unable to access the server URL"); }
                   }
                  if (serverUrl.match(/\/$/)) {
                       serverUrl = serverUrl.substring(0, serverUrl.length - 1);
                   } 
                   return serverUrl + OrgServicePath;
               }, 
           SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest: function () {
               var requestMain = ""
               requestMain += "<s:Envelope xmlns:s=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\">";
               requestMain += "  <s:Body>";
               requestMain += "    <Execute xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services\" xmlns:i=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\">";
               requestMain += "      <request i:type=\"b:SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest\" xmlns:a=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts\" xmlns:b=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2011/Contracts\">";
               requestMain += "        <a:Parameters xmlns:c=\"http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic\">";
               requestMain += "          <a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "            <c:key>SearchText</c:key>";
               requestMain += "            <c:value i:type=\"d:string\" xmlns:d=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">dolphins</c:value>";
               requestMain += "          </a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "          <a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "            <c:key>SubjectId</c:key>";
               requestMain += "            <c:value i:type=\"d:guid\" xmlns:d=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/\">3b200fe0-6d96-4e7b-9ddf-fd1a6df801e5</c:value>";
               requestMain += "          </a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "          <a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "            <c:key>UseInflection</c:key>";
               requestMain += "            <c:value i:type=\"d:boolean\" xmlns:d=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">false</c:value>";
               requestMain += "          </a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "          <a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "            <c:key>QueryExpression</c:key>";
               requestMain += "            <c:value i:type=\"a:QueryExpression\">";
               requestMain += "              <a:ColumnSet>";
               requestMain += "                <a:AllColumns>true</a:AllColumns>";
               requestMain += "                <a:Columns xmlns:d=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays\" />";
               requestMain += "              </a:ColumnSet>";
               requestMain += "              <a:Criteria>";
               requestMain += "                <a:Conditions />";
               requestMain += "                <a:FilterOperator>And</a:FilterOperator>";
               requestMain += "                <a:Filters />";
               requestMain += "              </a:Criteria>";
               requestMain += "              <a:Distinct>false</a:Distinct>";
               requestMain += "              <a:EntityName>kbarticle</a:EntityName>";
               requestMain += "              <a:LinkEntities />";
               requestMain += "              <a:Orders />";
               requestMain += "              <a:PageInfo>";
               requestMain += "                <a:Count>0</a:Count>";
               requestMain += "                <a:PageNumber>0</a:PageNumber>";
               requestMain += "                <a:PagingCookie i:nil=\"true\" />";
               requestMain += "                <a:ReturnTotalRecordCount>false</a:ReturnTotalRecordCount>";
               requestMain += "              </a:PageInfo>";
               requestMain += "              <a:NoLock>false</a:NoLock>";
               requestMain += "            </c:value>";
               requestMain += "          </a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>";
               requestMain += "        </a:Parameters>";
               requestMain += "        <a:RequestId i:nil=\"true\" />";
               requestMain += "        <a:RequestName>SearchByBodyKbArticle</a:RequestName>";
               requestMain += "      </request>";
               requestMain += "    </Execute>";
               requestMain += "  </s:Body>";
               requestMain += "</s:Envelope>";
               var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
               req.open("POST", SDK.SAMPLES._getServerUrl(), true)
               // Responses will return XML. It isn't possible to return JSON.
               req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml, text/xml, */*");
               req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
               req.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/Execute");
               var successCallback = null;
               var errorCallback = null;
               req.onreadystatechange = function () { SDK.SAMPLES.SearchByBodyKbArticleResponse(req, successCallback, errorCallback); };
               req.send(requestMain);
           },
       SearchByBodyKbArticleResponse: function (req, successCallback, errorCallback) {
               ///<summary>
               /// Recieves the assign response
               ///</summary>
               ///<param name="req" Type="XMLHttpRequest">
               /// The XMLHttpRequest response
               ///</param>
               ///<param name="successCallback" Type="Function">
               /// The function to perform when an successfult response is returned.
               /// For this message no data is returned so a success callback is not really necessary.
               ///</param>
               ///<param name="errorCallback" Type="Function">
               /// The function to perform when an error is returned.
               /// This function accepts a JScript error returned by the _getError function
               ///</param>
               if (req.readyState == 4) {
               if (req.status == 200) {
               if (successCallback != null)
               { successCallback(); }
               }
               else {
                   errorCallback(SDK.SAMPLES._getError(req.responseXML));
               }
           }
       },
       _getError: function (faultXml) {
           ///<summary>
           /// Parses the WCF fault returned in the event of an error.
           ///</summary>
           ///<param name="faultXml" Type="XML">
           /// The responseXML property of the XMLHttpRequest response.
           ///</param>
           var errorMessage = "Unknown Error (Unable to parse the fault)";
           if (typeof faultXml == "object") {
               try {
                   var bodyNode = faultXml.firstChild.firstChild;
                   //Retrieve the fault node
                   for (var i = 0; i < bodyNode.childNodes.length; i++) {
                       var node = bodyNode.childNodes[i];
                       //NOTE: This comparison does not handle the case where the XML namespace changes
                       if ("s:Fault" == node.nodeName) {
                       for (var j = 0; j < node.childNodes.length; j++) {
                           var faultStringNode = node.childNodes[j];
                           if ("faultstring" == faultStringNode.nodeName) {
                               errorMessage = faultStringNode.text;
                               break;
                           }
                       }
                       break;
                   }
               }
           }
           catch (e) { };
        }
        return new Error(errorMessage);
     },
 __namespace: true
};



To understand how to parse the response please review my post on using the DOM parser.
Now you can call the SDK.SAMPLES.SearchByBodyKbArticleRequest  function from your form jscript handler.
Thats all there is to it!


  1. I hope this helps!

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