Web API Functions and Enum Types

Today my friend Natraj Yegnaraman tweeted a trick to get some organization details inside Power Automate, to be exact this one.

What caught my eyes was the syntax, I recognized it was a Web API Function (the parameter is listed inside the URL) but I didn't recognize the value format:
Microsoft.Dynamics.CRM.EndpointAccessType'Default'.

I checked the Web API Function reference and after the metadata, it was the infamous Enum Type.

Enum Types are special, they are internal (meaning you can't create them as input or output of a Custom API or a Custom Action) and the syntax on how to use them is not so precise, the only reference I found when I was developing Dataverse REST Builder is inside this page regarding structuralProperty.

There is also an example on how to use it but only for Xrm.WebApi, also they are quite rare (the metadata of a trial instance has only 55 Enum Types and many of them belong to Complex Types, another internal structure).

Inside previous versions of DRB you would see the following message, as it was an unknown type:

Natraj's tweet showed me the URL syntax to use with jQuery/XHR, in addition to the Xrm.WebApi syntax (the Microsoft documentation list all the values inside the enumProperties, but I found it just need the selected value and not the whole array).

After some changes I released a new version of Dataverse REST Builder (1.0.0.5) and now Enum Types are rendered correctly:

As I wrote before they are rare and probably you will not need to deal with, but it's nice to have a reference on how they can be used (the function RetrieveCurrentOrganization is now part of the DRB demo data).

Portals and Web API, why not?

After Portals Superhero and MVP Victor Dantas shared the news regarding Web API and Portals (link) I started to make the required changes to Dataverse REST Builder in order to support the new syntax, and a new version (1.0.0.2) is out:

This new functionality is in Preview, so if you are planning to use it make sure to read carefully the documentation, as syntax and functionalities may change. Inside the new tab "Portals" I added some comments with the current links.

In order to execute this new syntax DRB replaces the Portals endpoint ("/_api") with the standard Web API endpoint, this means you can generate the code also inside an instance where a portal is not installed, but this also means that is not 100% accurate, it's a trade-off.

You will find the new "Portals" tab for the following requests: Retrieve Single, Retrieve Multiple, Create, Update, Delete, Associate and Disassociate.

You can download the new version from GitHub: https://github.com/GuidoPreite/DRB