Catalina API Error Not Able to Load Assembly

Catalina API Error Not Able to Load Assembly

Question

When I try to access Catalina’s API for Dynamics SL, I am getting an error that looks like this. What is the problem, and how can I fix it?

Answer:

Look at the web.config of your ctDynamicsSL web application and remove the section <system.codedom>. So looking below, just remove this total section from your web.config

  <system.codedom>
    <compilers>
      <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" type="Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.CSharpCodeProvider, Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform, Version=2.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" warningLevel="4" compilerOptions="/langversion:6 /nowarn:1659;1699;1701" />
      <compiler language="vb;vbs;visualbasic;vbscript" extension=".vb" type="Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.VBCodeProvider, Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform, Version=2.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" warningLevel="4" compilerOptions="/langversion:14 /nowarn:41008 /define:_MYTYPE=\&quot;Web\&quot; /optionInfer+" />
    </compilers>
  </system.codedom>
Call Custom Stored Procedure via Catalina’s RESTful API for Dynamics SL

Call Custom Stored Procedure via Catalina’s RESTful API for Dynamics SL

Catalina has had a way to call custom stored procedures from their SOAP based web services for Dynamics SL for years.  You can now do it using the RESTful API version.

Looking at the Swagger Documentation, you can now see a customSQL resource (If you don’t see this, contact Catalina Support to see about getting updated to the latest version of Catalina API for Dynamics SL)

Example using one of our procedures:

/api/customSQL/xct_spDSLvalidateContactID

{ 
    "parameters": 
    [
        { 
        "name": "ContactID", "value": "BJON"
        } 
        ,
        { 
        "name": "CustID", "value": "CT0100"
        } 
        ,
        { 
        "name": "Type", "value": "B"
        } 
    ]
    ,
    "checkSum": "3CB06C9A4A83BECCFC60684C271818EDEEAA5770" 
}

NOTE:  the checksum is a security feature that is turned on by default.  This allows the API to double check to make sure that you are who you say you are.  Use a SHA1 hash of the stored procedure name to generate the checksum.

The checksum requirement can be disabled in your DSLCONFIGFILE.xml  file.

You can generate the checksum using any SHA1 library, or you can use the library included in our service distribution: /ctDynamicsSL/bin/ctStandardLib.dll

var checksum = ctStandardLib.ctHelper.getHash(siteKey, storedProcedureName);

Problem with Special Characters in Catalina API Query String

Problem with Special Characters in Catalina API Query String

I ran into an issue earlier where I was trying to retrieve a customer using the Catalina Technology API for Dynamics SL. But the problem was that the CustID had special characters in it. In this case, the CustID looked like this: “BB& 1 2“

So, there was a prefix of “BB”, then there was an ampersand, and then there were two spaces, then the number 1, two more spaces, then the number 2.

First of all, I had to URL encode the CustID that was getting passed to my API so that the call looked like this:

/api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer/BB%26%20%201%20%202

You can see that & was replaced by %26 and a space was replaced by %20.

Now, that is fine, but then .NET was having problems with the & (even encoded) in that it had an error like this:

A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected from the client (&amp;).

This is remedied by looking at the web.config of your ctDynamicsSL application. Search for the keyword: httpRuntime. Once you found that, if you don’t already have an attribute requestPathInvalidCharacters in that key, add it. This is a good default one:

<httpRuntime requestPathInvalidCharacters="&lt;,&gt;,%,&amp;,:,\,?" />

Then from that remove the &amp; so that you will allow the & to go in. That way, your final httpRuntime should look similar to this:

<httpRuntime requestPathInvalidCharacters="&lt;,&gt;,%,:,\,?" />

As you can see above, I removed &amp;, from the invalid characters. Thus allowing the ampersand to be allowed.

NOTE: If your httpRuntime has other attributes like the .NET version, etc. Leave those alone. Just worry about the requestPathInvalidCharacters attribute and it’s value.

Access Catalina’s API for Dynamics SL using .NET Core

If you are looking to build a cross platform application in .NET Core that can access Dynamics SL, you can use Catalina’s API for Dynamics SL. This is a demo on how you can do it using Visual Studio and deploy the client to Windows, Mac, and/or Linux (or any OS that supports .NET Core).

Demo on Connecting to Dynamics SL through .NET Core

You can get the source code for this demo on our GitHub site: https://github.com/CatalinaTechnology/dotNETCore/MyConsoleApp

Minimum Server Requirements for Catalina API for Dynamics SL

Minimum Server Requirements for Catalina API for Dynamics SL

One of the first questions we get regarding our API for Dynamics SL is what are the minimum server requirements to run the API.

First of all is the server. We require a Windows Server. Preferably Windows 2012 R2 or better with a minimum of 4gig of ram. NOTE: Diskspace is normally not a big issue since we don’t store anything on the API application except configuration. Also note that most of our customers use a VM for this.

Web Server Roles

  • Application Development
  • .NET Extensibility 3.5, 4.7
  • ASP.NET 3.5, 4.5+
  • ISAPI Filters
  • ISAPI Extensions
  • Basic Authorization

Other

  • .NET 3.5 Framework
  • .NET 4.5+ Framework

Create Projects with Catalina’s API for SL – SOAP Web Services

Last week, I posted a video for a demo on how to use our REST API to integrate to projects in Dynamics SL. This one uses our SOAP based Web Services to do the same thing.

Sample code can be acquired from our GitHub repository:
https://github.com/CatalinaTechnology/ctAPIClientExamples/tree/master/TestAPIClient

You can clone or download all sample projects here from github:

http:// https://github.com/CatalinaTechnology/ctAPIClientExamples

Retrieve Catalina Queue FIFO

Retrieve Catalina Queue FIFO

If you use the Catalina Queue Engine for queuing records, you might want to retrieve data in a FIFO (First In First Out) method. This means you want to grab the oldest records first. This is easily accomplished by calling the Catalina Queue API with the parameter sortBy in the query string.

Example, if you are retrieving the queue ORDERS, you would format your URL, for the Queue API, like this:

http://YOURSERVER/ctDynamicsSL/api/queue/ORDER?sortBy=createdDate

This will then sort the queue in Ascending order by createdDate. Which means it will retrieve oldest items first.

Below is a curl example that does the same thing.

curl -X GET \
   'http://YourServer/ctDynamicsSL/api/queue/QUEUETYPE?sortBy=createdDate' \
   -H 'Accept: application/json' \
   -H 'Authorization: Basic YOURAUTHHERE' \
   -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
   -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   -H 'CpnyID: YOURCPNYID' \
   -H 'SiteID: YOURSITEID' \
   -H 'cache-control: no-cache'