Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 : Working with Data in Forms - Building selected or available lists

This functionality is based on the SysListPanelRelationTable application class. Developers only need to create its instance with the required parameters on the form where the list is required and the rest is done automatically.

This recipe will show the basic principle of how to create selected/available lists. We will add an option to the user to assign inventory items to buyer groups in the Buyer groups form in the Inventory management module setup.

How to do it...

How it works...

The table InventBuyerGroupList is used as a relation table between buyer groups and inventory items to support many-to-many relations. The SysListPanelRelationTable class will populate this table with the data automatically.

In terms of form design, the only thing that needs to be added is a new tab page called Items. SysListPanelRelationTable will add all the required controls to this page automatically.

In the form's class declaration, we declare a SysListPanelRelationTable object. The object is created in the form's init() using the static newForm() constructor. It accepts the following parameters:

We also have to initialize the list by calling it's member method init() in the form's init() right after super().

The code in the pageActivated() of the new tab page is triggered once the user opens that tab page. It populates the lists with the inventory data depending on which buyer group is selected.

There's more...

The SysListPanelRelationTable class can only display fields from one table. In the previous example, we used item number and item name. But what if we want to show other item related information, which is stored in a different table, for instance sales price or available quantity?

Another class called SysListPanelRelationTableCallback exists in the standard Dynamics AX application, which allows creating customized lists. To demonstrate its capabilities, we will expand the previous example to display item prices.

First in the form's class declaration, we have to change the list declaration to the following:

SysListPanelRelationTableCallback sysListPanel;

Next we need to create two methods one for the left list, the other for the right, which generate and return data containers to be displayed in each section:

container selectedItems()

{
container ret;
container data;
InventTable inventTable;
InventBuyerGroupList groupList;
;
while select groupList
join firstonly inventTable
where inventTable.ItemId == groupList.ItemId
{
data = [inventTable.ItemId,
inventTable.ItemId,
inventTable.ItemName,
inventTable.salesPcsPrice()];
ret = conins(ret, conlen(ret)+1, data);
}
return ret;
}
container availableItems()

{
container ret;
container data;
InventTable inventTable;
InventBuyerGroupList groupList;
;
while select inventTable
notexists join firstonly groupList
where groupList.ItemId == inventTable.ItemId
{
data = [inventTable.ItemId,
inventTable.ItemId,
inventTable.ItemName,
inventTable.salesPcsPrice()];
selected/available listselected/available listmethods, creatingret = conins(ret, conlen(ret)+1, data);
}
return ret;
}


					  

Each method returns a container of containers. Each container in the main one represents one line in the section. It contains four items— the first is an identification number and the rest of them are the three columns.

Next, we replace the form's init() with the following code:

void init()

{
container columns;
#ResAppl
;
columns = [0, 0, 0];
sysListPanel = SysListPanelRelationTableCallback::newForm(
element,
control::Items,
"Selected",
"Available",
#ImageItem,
tablenum(InventBuyerGroupList),
fieldnum(InventBuyerGroupList, ItemId),
fieldnum(InventBuyerGroupList, GroupId),
tablenum(InventTable),
fieldnum(InventTable, ItemId),
columns,
0,
'',
'',
identifierstr(selectedItems),
identifierstr(availableItems));
super();
selected/available listselected/available listmethods, creatingsysListPanel.init();
}


					  

This time we used the static newForm() constructor of SysListPanelRelationTableCallback, which is very similar to the previous one, but accepts as arguments the names of methods, which will be used to populate the data in the right and left sections.

Also notice that the container that previously contained fields representing each list column now has three zeros. By doing that, we simply define that there will be three columns in each list and because the lists actually are generated outside SysListPanelRelationTableCallback class, we do not need to specify the field numbers of the columns anymore.

Now, when you run the Buyer groups form both sections contain additional column with item sales price: