#013 CODEUNIT API’s – ODATA V4 UNBOUND ACTIONS

One of the key recommendations to improve Web Services performance in Business Central is to use OData protocol instead of the deprecated and old-fashioned SOAP.

According to Microsoft documentationA, using OData protocol in a Web Service can be up to 10 times faster than using the SOAP protocol.

Publishing a Web Service using OData protocol is simple when an entity is provided (Page or Query). When a Codeunit is published as a Web Service, only the SOAP Url is automatically provided. However, it is possible to call a Codeunit published Web Service using OData protocol, turning it into an “API Codeunit”.

(A) Writing efficient Web Services

Step 1: Create your Web Service Codeunit

In this example it is created a Codeunit with method that returns a
Json array containing Customer’s data, according to a No. and Name filter:

Step 1 Create your Web Service Codeunit

Step 2: Publish your app and publish your Codeunit as a Web Service

Go to the Web Services page and insert a new record with:

1. Object Type = Codeunit;

2. Object ID = Your Codeunit Id;

3. Service Name = Type the service name (example: CustWS);

4. Published = Yes.

Step 2 Publish your app and publish your Codeunit as a Web Service

Step 3: Obtain the Url to call the Web Service

By definition, an OData base url in Business Central is composed as it follows:

http://<ServerName>:<ODataPort>/<ServerInstance>/ ODataV4/

The url is then followed by the service name and the company parameter:

<ServiceName>?company=<CompanyName>

To call an unbound action, in addition to the Service Name, we need to add the method to call, so this is the standard url:

http://<ServerName>:<ODataPort>/<ServerInstance>/ ODataV4/<ServiceName_MethodName>?company=<CompanyName>

Example:

http://localhost:7163/BC190/ODataV4/CustWS_GetCustomer?company=3adc449e-8621-ec11-bb76-000d3a2993

Step 4: Test your Web Service

Using Postman, you can now test your Web Service2.

Step 4 Test your Web Service