As most probably know, it is not possible to access the file system while in Business Central cloud environment.
For example, in Dynamics NAV, we could have a job queue entry that, when run, creates a file and copies it in a network folder. We can still do that in an On-Premise environment, but not with cloud BC.
You could create the file and use DownloadFromStream, but that would only prompt you do download it locally, but would not copy it somewhere on a local or network folder.
If you try to use File.Create() you would get the warning: “The type or method ‘Create’ cannot be used for ‘Extension’ development”.
If your customer is happy to grab the file manually every time from the downloads folder then this should suffice:
But, if we want to automatize this process and run the extract on a regular basis, we need to find a cloud solution for storing the files.
Currently, there are 4 types of storage in Azure platform:
- Containers/Blobs
- File Shares
- Queues
- Tables
In my previous blog I dived into the Azure Storage of type Tables and tackled its API.
This blog is about interacting with the Azure storage blob containers:
- manually, via Azure Portal
- simulation, via VS Code extension “Rest Client”
- Business Central extension
- view blob container with Excel
- get Azure Blobs locally
I found on Michael Megel’s blog a nice solution for exactly what I need. Awesome job on Blob Containers API, Michael! Thank you for sharing!
What I need:
- Azure:
- Set up a blob container to store Business Central exported files
- Set up Storage Access Key
- Simulation:
- In VS Code, write requests with “Rest Client” extension, targeting Azure blob container API
- Business Central:
- A setup table in Business Central for Azure access stuff
- Wrote an export interface that would allow users to run an action(“Write File in Azure”) that will send the extract to Azure container. The same code could be executed by a job queue.
Blob Container Setup
To set up a container, following Michael’s notes on above blog was enough for me.
For blob container accessibility I went on the path of shared access signature “SAS Token”.
Once created, you can start playing with the storage account container API.
I created the storage manually:
Drilling down into the storage account, I created a new container:
Simulation:
In VS Code, using Rest Client,
- I sent a request to get the list of containers:
Request:
GET https://svflorida.blob.core.windows.net/?comp=list&%5Bhere you insert your SAS token key]
content-type: application/json
Response:
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Length: 0
Content-MD5: 1B2M2Y8AsgTpgAmY7PhCfg==
Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:05:13 GMT
ETag: “0x8D9627B1BD88A0F”
Server: Windows-Azure-Blob/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0
x-ms-request-id: 3f97555d-801e-006d-5263-94f646000000
x-ms-version: 2020-08-04
x-ms-content-crc64: AAAAAAAAAAA=
x-ms-request-server-encrypted: true
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:05:13 GMT
Connection: close
2. I sent a PUT request to insert an empty file:
Request:
PUT https://svflorida.blob.core.windows.net/vendorlist/vl1111?%5Byour SAS token here]
x-ms-blob-type: BlockBlob
Content-Length: 0
Response:
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Length: 0
Content-MD5: 1B2M2Y8AsgTpgAmY7PhCfg==
Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:23:46 GMT
ETag: “0x8D9627DB340E9DD”
Server: Windows-Azure-Blob/1.0 Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0
x-ms-request-id: b77cbfb2-b01e-003b-2566-9407a9000000
x-ms-version: 2020-08-04
x-ms-content-crc64: AAAAAAAAAAA=
x-ms-request-server-encrypted: true Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:23:46 GMT
Connection: close
And this is the file in Azure portal:
Business Central extension:
This is how the new setup table “Azure Storage Setup” looks in BC:
This is how the new BC interface “Vendors Export Log” looks like:
“Write File In Azure” action on page 50251 “Vendor Export Log” does the following:
- exports all BC vendors to a blob
- the blob is then written to a PUT request content
- the PUT request is sent to Azure Blob Storage API
Consult Blobs with Excel:
BC users can click on the URL link above and download locally the file or they, and other 3rd party users, can access the files via Excel, as I explained in my previous blog.
This time though, when creating the connection choose Data – > Get Data -> From Azure -> From Azure Blob Storage.
And finally displayed in the Excel book:
Get Azure Blobs locally
To help with getting the files locally, I wrote 2 blogs:
- one about getting the files locally using Power Automate
- one about Azure CLI to copy the files from azure blob storage locally
For more about storage accounts in Azure check this out.
You can find sample code repository here.
2 Responses