Accessing the Dynamics GP Configuration File (Dynamics.exe.config) from a Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP Add-In – Part 3

This is Part 3 of a three part article on working with the Dynamics.exe.config .NET configuration file.  with the following articles:

• Part 1 – Creating a configuration handler for a custom configuration section.
• Part 2 – Testing the configuration handler.
• Part 3 – Using the configuration handler in a Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP Add-In

[Click here for the Visual Studio solution used in these articles]

So finally, in this part, we’ll put it all together and demonstrate how to access the Dynamics.exe.config configuration from a Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP add-in.  For this, we’ll create a simple “Hello Configuration” add-in.  We’ll attach it to the Additional menu of the SOP Batch Entry form as we might a SOP integration.

There’s really only two parts of this add-in:

• Initialization where we verify the existence of the configuration section and add it if it’s missing and add a menu item and associated event handler to the Additional menu of the SOP Batch Entry form.
• Event handler, that in this case simply displays the “Hello Configuration” caption, as stored in the configuration section, and the hypothetical import file name from the same section.

Thus the code consists of a single class file in the HelloConfigurationAddIn project of the solution linked to above.  The project was created using the Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In template.  A reference is added to the GPAddInConfiguration project.  The entire code for the add-in is as follows:

using System.Configuration;
using GPAddInConfiguration;

namespace HelloConfigurationAddIn
{
    public class GPAddIn : IDexterityAddIn
    {
        public void Initialize()
        {
            // Check to see if the section exists and if not create it.
            this.VerifyConfigurationSection();

            // Add to Additional menu for SOP batch form.
            Dynamics.Forms.SopBatchEntry.AddMenuHandler(HelloConfigurationEvent,"Hello Configuration");
        }

        //  Verifies the existence of the section and adds it if missing.
        void VerifyConfigurationSection()
        {
            // If section doesn't exist create it.
            if (ConfigurationManager.GetSection("GPAddIn") == null)
            {
                // Get the current configuration file for writing.
                Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

                // Create the new section.
                GPAddInSectionHandler section = new GPAddInSectionHandler();
                config.Sections.Add("GPAddIn", section);
                section.SectionInformation.ForceSave = true;

                // Save the section
                config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Full);

                ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("GPAddIn");
            }
        }

        // Script to handle menu entry callbacks
        void HelloConfigurationEvent(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            GPAddInSectionHandler section = (GPAddInSectionHandler)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("GPAddIn");
            MessageBox.Show(section.HelloConfigurationCaption + "\n\nImport File:  " + section.ImportFileName, "Hello Configuration");
        }
    }
}

The Initialize method calls the VerifyConfigurationSection function that checks for the existence of the section in the Dynamics.exe.config configuration, and if missing, adds it with the default values.  Additionally, it adds a menu handler for the Additional menu of the SOP Batch Entry form, passing the HelloConfigurationEvent function as the event handler.

The HelloConfigurationEvent simply opens the GPAddIn section of the configuration and displays the HelloConfigurationCaption and ImportFileName values in a message box.

To properly deploy the add-in you need to copy the HelloConfigurationAddIn assembly DLL to the GP AddIns folder as you would any add-in.  However, you also need to deploy the GPAddInConfiguration assembly to the GP folder that contains the Dynamics.exe.config file.  Configuration handler assemblies must reside in the same folder as the host application.

So give it a whirl and see how changes to the values in the configuration file show up in the message box.  Note that in this case, changes don’t show up until you restart the application.

I hope these posts have inspired you to make use of the power of the configuration file in your Dynamics GP add-ins.  There’s certainly much more you can do once you dig into them.  Let me know what you find.