Get all attributes in FetchXML in Plugins | Dynamics 365 CRM [Quick Tip]

December 28, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Dynamics 365 CRM Plugins all attributes in fetch xml, dynamics 365 crm plugin, fetch xml, fetchxml

In Plugin development, when you use FetchXML while using RetrieveMultiple to retrieve data.

In some scenarios since you want to retrieve a large number of columns, so mentioning each column is cumbersome on not worth to save the extra processing. In that case, it’s better to retrieve everything.

Here’s a quick tip on how you can quickly retrieve everything in 1 tag in the FetchXML!

Creating FetchXML using Advanced Find

As a standard practice, just to revise – this is how you create FetchXML from Advanced Find.

While working on Advanced Find, you click on Download Fetch XML
This gives you an XML output of the FetchXML query which you can use in your plugins.

All Attributes

Here’s what you change in order to get all attributes –

You remove all the marked columns as shown below
And replace the <attribute> tags with <all-attributes />. Make sure no other <attribute name /> tags are included in combination with this <all-attributes /> tag.

Hope this was helpful! Here are some more Dynamics 365 posts which you might be interested in –

Thank you!!

Invalid XML issue in Dataverse connector for List Rows action | Fetch XML Query | Power Automate

May 4, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate cloud flows, dataverse connector, dataverse flow, encodeuricomponent, fetch xml, fetchxml, invalid xml, Power Automate, special characters

While using Dataverse connector [formerly known as Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector] for different operations, List Rows is one of the common Actions we use in Flow implementations with Dataverse.

If using FetchXML Query as filter is your choice, there one of the most common issues with an XML is having an Invalid XML due to the special characters in the data we are passing.
Many times, this issue goes unidentified since we end up checking only syntax!

Here’s what you can also add as an additional check to escape the special character scenario in FetchXML query in a List Rows action.

Invalid XML Issue – Special Character

Let’s look at one of the common examples where you’ll see this error on runtime when a FetchXML issue appears

You have a Flow wherein you are using FetchXML query to list records in Dataverse connector using List Records action.
But when happens is, when this Flow Runs, it results in an error on the List Records step.
And if you look at the right hand pane for the error, it could be a Invalid XML error which you would get in Dataverse (or while working in Dynamics CRM if you have experienced in the past).
So, let’s look at what could be wrong in this case among several other reason of using FetchXML and getting syntactical errors.
If you look at my XML below, it looks like there could be some parameters that have special characters in them and hence, your XML might fail if not anything else.

Let’s look at how we can resolve the same.

encodeURIComponent() function

As a solution to this, you can use the encodeURIComponent function in Flow to counter this problem –

Now, in ideal cases, you parameters could be coming in from elsewhere which you would add in the FetchXML as parameters.
Let me store the same in a sample String Variable for now.

In the Value, I’ll look for an expression called as encodeUriComponent()
Then, I simply enter the value which I’ll pass on to the Fetch XML filter to be used later on. And then I enter the value in the function.

And it looks like this in your variable.
Now, you just pass this on to the Fetch XML itself.
And now, this should work successfully

Here’ is the Microsoft Docs of the function to encore URI and help streamline special characters – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference#encodeUriComponent?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911

Hope this was helpful!

Here are some Power Automate posts you might want to check –

Thanks!!

FetchXML Aggregation in a Flow using CDS (Current Environment) connector | Power Automate

March 29, 2021 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate aggregate functions, common data service, fetch xml, microsoft dataverse, Power Automate

Getting the count of records or averaging is one of the most commonly used Aggregate Functions in programming. FetchXML queries too facilitate aggregation. So here’s how you can utilize the same in a Flow using Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector [Because I’m waiting for it to be renamed to Dataverse Connector yet 😊]

To know about Fetch XML aggregation, here’s the Microsoft Docs link for the same – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/powerapps/developer/data-platform/use-fetchxml-aggregation?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911

Scenario

Let’s assume, you want to get the count of records from a Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector. Here’s how you can do the same using existing Aggregate Functions provided by Fetch XML.

Disclaimer: This is of course, not he only way to get get the aggregate functions, you can implement custom logic after you’ve retrieved all the data as well.

Here’s the Fetch XML I’ll be using to retrieve all the Accounts from the Dataverse environment.
I’m using List Rows action from the connector which is this

And this is the query which I generated from the Advanced Find in D365 CE
Below are the changed I must make to work with Aggregates in Fetch XML.
in the <fetch>, I’ll set aggregate=”true”
And the columns which I’m using the Aggregate function on, I’ll mention the aggregate=”[Aggregate]” alias=”[AliasName]”
Now, this query along won’t run and you’ll get the below error –
“An attribute can not be requested when an aggregate operation has been specified and its neither groupby not aggregate. NodeXml: [FirstAttributeInQuery]“
The reason being, since you are using Aggregate, only the columns on which aggregates are applied must exist. Hence, you’ll need to remove the other attributes which don’t have aggregate applied to them.
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And the workable FetchXML will now look like this
When you run this, these are the results you’ll get in which you’ll have the aggregate value.
Observe the same below

Parse JSON to read the aggregate

Now, since you’ve got the aggregated results. You can do an extra step to read the value. There are several ways to contain this, but here’s a quick example of how I did it –

Declare a variable. It must be outside of a For Each at all times.
And in the For Each, because I’m selecting the Array inside the value attribute in the Fetch XML results, I can then use the sample data to generate the schema and use it. The loop will anyway run only once.
And I’ll set the variable below
And here’s the final result once you run it. Your scenario of usage may vary.