Dynamics 365 Business Central: Can we extend standard APIs? – Download Standard Source Code for APIs

Hi, Readers.
Today I would like to talk about a question that is often asked. Can we extend standard APIs in Business Central.

With Business Central you can create Connect apps. Connect apps establish a point-to-point connection between Dynamics 365 Business Central and a 3rd party solution or service and is typically created using standard REST API to interchange data. Any coding language capable of calling REST APIs can be used to develop your Connect app. Microsoft has prepared many standard APIs for us. In BC21, Microsoft also added new dedicated APIs for financial.

PS: Welcome to the API(v2.0) for Business Central and A simple way to view the list of all APIs

But for customers, standard APIs may not fully meet their needs, and customization may need to be considered at this time.

First of all, the standard APIs are pages, PageType Property is API. (Pages of this type are used to generate web service endpoints and cannot be shown in the user interface.)

So can we use Page Extension Object to extend it? (The page extension object extends a Dynamics 365 Business Central page object and adds or overrides the functionality)

In short, so far this is impossible.

API Page Type:

This page type cannot be extended by creating a page extension object. Instead, you must create a new API by adding a page object.

The next question is, since we can’t extend standard APIs, how do we download the standard source code?

I will share three ways to do this.

1. Get to the source code of the default apps by Business Central Artifacts

The prerequisite is that the BcContainerHelper must already be installed.

Run the following command in Windows PowerShell ISE.
For example: Download the source code of the latest available version.

Get-BCArtifactUrl

Download-Artifacts -artifactUrl (Get-BCArtifactUrl)

Download speed depends on your internet speed.

After the download is complete, you can find the content you just downloaded in the “C:\bcartifacts.cache\sandbox” folder.

Then you can find all the Microsoft first-party app files in the “C:\bcartifacts.cache\sandbox\21.4.52563.52939\w1\Extensions” folder.

The source code files of the standard APIs can be found after unzipping the app file.
For example, “Microsoft__Exclude_APIV2__21.4.52563.52939\src\src\pages”

More details about Business Central Artifacts in Freddys blog.

2. Using “dependencies” property in app.json file. (The prerequisite is that you must know the information of the extension)

For example, API V2.0:

  "dependencies": [
    {
      "id": "10cb69d9-bc8a-4d27-970a-9e110e9db2a5",
      "name": "T_Exclude_APIV2_",
      "publisher": "Microsoft",
      "version": "21.0.0.0"
    }
  ]

Run AL: Download symbols command

Symbols have been downloaded.

Then you can find the app file for the API in the folder.

3. Using microsoft/ALAppExtensions (Microsoft AL application foundation modules and application add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central)

For example, APIV2 -> pages:

4. Using MSDyn365BC.Code.History by provided Stefan Maroń

If you just want a reference and don’t want the latest version, you can just use it, Stefan will update it for us every month.👏👏👏

PS:
1. Here you can find more info on what to do with the source code of the standard APIs:
https://www.kauffmann.nl/2021/03/12/extending-standard-apis-1/
https://www.kauffmann.nl/2021/04/16/extending-standard-apis-2/

2. How to list all installed extensions/apps in your Business Central environment (Including hidden apps – “_Exclude_……”)

3. All app info of the Microsoft First Party Apps on the current version (BC 21.4).

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU