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Dynamics ax 2012 traversing selected records in a form data source

A classical developer challenge in Dynamics AX is to enable a form button when multiple records have been selected in the form by the user.

This usually involves writing some form of loop (for or while or do-while) that starts out with calling _ds.getFirst() and continuing the loop as long as _ds.getNext() returns a tablebuffer.

Well things got a little bit easier in AX 2012. In AX 2012 you can use the MultiSelectionHelper class.

One example is the following that I encountered in AX 2012:

Can you make the customer collection letter print out run for each selected collection record in the
Print/Post collection letters form (Accounts receiveable / Periodic / Collections / Print/Post Collection letters).

If we ignore the possibility for setting up print destination for running each report we can do this in two steps:

1) Change the "Multiselect" property of the "MenuButton" and the "Menuitembutton" in the MenuButton in the form from "Auto" to "Yes".

2) Change the CustCollectionJourController used to run the report to handle multiselected records from the form.
 I chose to implement it this way:

2.1) A new method "isMultipleSelected" was added to the class.
private boolean isMultipleSelected(Args _args)
{
    MultiSelectionHelper msh;
    int i;
    CustCollectionLetterJour cclj;

    if (_args.caller() is SysSetupFormRun)
    {
        msh = MultiSelectionHelper::createFromCaller(_args.caller());
        cclj = msh.getFirst();
        while (cclj)
        {
            if (i>1)
                break;
            i++;
            cclj = msh.getNext();
        }
    }
    return i>1;
}

The method is takes the args passed from the menuitem / form and checks if it is a SysSetupFormRun object. If it is a MultiSelectionHelper object is instantiated.
This can help traverse the selected records in the datasource, and we simply traverse it until we're certain that more than one record is selected.
2.2)

The following code

                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, CollectionLetterNum)).value(selectedRec.CollectionLetterNum);
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, AccountNum)).value(selectedRec.AccountNum);
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, Status)).value(enum2str(selectedRec.Status));
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, CollectionLetterCode)).value(enum2str(selectedRec.CollectionLetterCode));
is substituted for:

if (this.isMultipleSelected(this.parmArgs()))
{
    ds.clearRanges();
    MultiSelectionHelper::createFromCaller(this.parmArgs().caller()).createQueryRanges(ds,fieldStr(CustCollectionLetterJour,CollectionLetterNum));
}
else
{
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, CollectionLetterNum)).value(selectedRec.CollectionLetterNum);
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, AccountNum)).value(selectedRec.AccountNum);
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, Status)).value(enum2str(selectedRec.Status));
                SysQuery::findOrCreateRange(ds, fieldNum(CustCollectionLetterJour, CollectionLetterCode)).value(enum2str(selectedRec.CollectionLetterCode));
}
So MultiSelectionHelper can not only help you traverse the selected record, it can actually build a queryRange for your query based on the selected records in your form by a call to the createQueryRanges method. :)

Nice one.

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