Ajax using Fetch Message

Ajax is a collection of technologies complied into one word (“mess”), as such retrieving information from crm can be cumbersome and error prone. Although there are tools that can help you accomplish the task I found they require too match code and sometimes you find your self wasting hours looking for meaningless errors.

Now, all I wanted is; to create a fetch (using advanced find), hand it over to a js method (Fetch) and expect an xmldocument (FetchResult) I can query with ease. The code below is the result of my quest “to the promised land”.

To get the FetchXml, All you have to do is:

1. Create an advanced find query using ,well, crm advanced find , press ctrl + N to open the advanced find in a new window to reveal the address bar (or press F11 twice)

2. In the address bar paste this simple js snippet that returns the
FetchXml: javascript:void( alert( advFind.FetchXml ))

3. Press ctrl + A and ctrl + c to copy the fetch into your working js document or onload event.

The CreateXmlHttpObject() and FetchEncode() are functions Microsoft use in their code. I pasted them here as part of the infrastructure to avoid dependency. All you really need is the Fetch() function. Now this is unsupported but because the code is considered infrastructure you
should consider putting it inside global.js and make it available to all crm Forms (entities).

If MS is listening, one of the most needed features ,beside filtered lookups, is an "OnGlobal" event (like the onload event) that integrates code as such to the global.js file.

The example below uses a static fetch that returns the current user; you may concatenate dynamic values as needed.

function OnCrmPageLoad()
{
 var FetchResult = Fetch('<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false"><entity name="systemuser"><attribute name="fullname"/><attribute name="businessunitid"/><attribute name="title"/><attribute name="address1_telephone1"/><attribute name="systemuserid"/><order attribute="fullname" descending="false"/><filter type="and"><condition attribute="systemuserid" operator="eq-userid"/></filter></entity></fetch>');
 alert( FetchResult.selectSingleNode("//fullname").text ); //User Fullname
}

function Fetch( xml )
{
 var Xml = "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">"
  Xml += GenerateAuthenticationHeader()
  Xml += "<soap:Body>";
  Xml += "<Fetch xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">";
  Xml += "<fetchXml>";
  Xml += FetchEncode(xml); // Microsoft _HtmlEncode function
  Xml += "</fetchXml>";
  Xml += "</Fetch>";
  Xml += "</soap:Body>";
  Xml += "</soap:Envelope>";

 var XmlHttp = CreateXmlHttpObject(); // Microsot CreateXmlHttp function
  XmlHttp.open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx", false ); //Sync Request
  XmlHttp.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
  XmlHttp.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Fetch");
  XmlHttp.send(Xml);

 var XmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument");
  XmlDoc.async = false;
  XmlDoc.resolveExternals = false;
  XmlDoc.loadXML(XmlHttp.responseXML.text);

 return XmlDoc;
}

function CreateXmlHttpObject() //CreateXmlHttp
{
 var oXmlHttp = null;
 if(window.XMLHttpRequest)
 {
  oXmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
 }
 else
 {
  var arrProgIds = ["Msxml2.XMLHTTP","Microsoft.XMLHTTP"];
  for(var iCount = 0; iCount < arrProgIds.length;iCount++)
  {
   try
   {
    oXmlHttp = new ActiveXObject(arrProgIds[iCount]);
    break;
   }
   catch(e){}
  }
 }
 
 return oXmlHttp;
}

function FetchEncode( strInput ) //_HtmlEncode
{
 var c;
 var HtmlEncode = '';

 if(strInput == null)
 {
  return null;
 }
 if (strInput == '')
 {
  return '';
 }

 for(var cnt = 0; cnt < strInput.length; cnt++)
 {
  c = strInput.charCodeAt(cnt);

  if (( ( c > 96 ) && ( c < 123 ) ) ||
  ( ( c > 64 ) && ( c < 91 ) ) ||
  ( c == 32 ) ||
  ( ( c > 47 ) && ( c < 58 ) ) ||
  ( c == 46 ) ||
  ( c == 44 ) ||
  ( c == 45 ) ||
  ( c == 95 ))
  {
   HtmlEncode = HtmlEncode + String.fromCharCode(c);
  }
  else 
  {
   HtmlEncode = HtmlEncode + '&#' + c + ';';
  }
 }
 
 return HtmlEncode;
}

OnCrmPageLoad();