How to debug a sandbox plugin in CRM 2013 online

How to debug a sandbox plugin in CRM 2013 online

Preface

Debugging a sandboxed plugin in CRM 2013 online may sound a little obscure at first but don't you deny that it would be really life saver. Maybe you've given up the idea and instead decided to do something that I call poor man's debugging - throwing InvalidPluginExecutionExceptions everywhere and hoping to find a solution? I admit, I used to do that a lot too but this is just wrong. Throwing exceptions is not a solution for debugging, it is solution for handling exceptions and should stay that way.

In this blog post I'm teaching you, step by step, how you can debug a plugin in CRM and save a huge amount of time and effort in the future.

First we go through what you'll need. You probably own all necessary components already since you are a CRM programmer.

Then I explain an example scenario that I'm using while going through this debuggin process.

You may now close all other tabs in your browser. This blog post contains all you need in order to debug a plugin in CRM Online.

What you need

1. Plugin to debug
2. CRM 2013 online (although this might work for on-premises as well)
3. CRM 2013 SDK
4. Visual Studio (I'm using Visual Studio 2012)

Scenario

Let's pretend we are developing a plugin that has to generate an email address for a contact. Email address is generated by using contact's full name and by adding a fixed "@exampledomain.com" to the end. 

We've created a plugin that'll be fired always when a contact is created or updated (running a plugin on every update is not preferred in this case but just play along). 

Both steps are registered on pre-operation stage of execution.

Below is my plugin code. Note that I've divided some of the common plugin logic to its own class (Plugin.cs) which we are inheriting in our actual plugin. 

So what happens there is we take target entity's full name property and add "@exampledomain.com" to it. Then we assign that new email string to entity's emailaddress1 property. Since this is a pre-operation plugin we don't have to call update.

This plugin works well on create because full name is business required field. But for some reason on update this is not working... Well we all know the reason already, but let's pretend we don't.

It's debugging time!

Debug a plugin

Step 1

Open your plugin registration tool. It is located in SDK\Tools\PluginRegistration folder.

Step 2

While plugin registration opened you want to install something called a profiler. All you need to do is to press "Install Profiler" and wait for a moment. 

When the profiler is installed (when you see "Profiler Installed Succesfully") press Ok. 

Note: This (profiler) creates a new managed solution to CRM. As I was writing this tutorial something weird happened (CRM happened) and my plugin registration tool lost a connection to CRM. I wasn't able to connect CRM for a little moment so I went and deleted that managed solution from CRM manually. I don't know if it was only coincidence or if it actually helped but everything worked normally after that. So that's something to keep in mind for sure!

Step 3

Choose a plugin and a plugin step you want to debug.

As described in the scenario our plugin is crashing on update event. So we want to debug our plugin on update step / event. 

Highlight a correct step and press "Start Profiling"

Step 4

Set up profiler settings. You may want to leave them as they are. Press OK when ready.

Step 5

Once you've started the profiler you have to raise an event that will fire the plugin. In our case that means we have to update an existing contact.

I'm updating Fernando Alonso's job title to 1st driver which will raise an update event but will also crash our plugin (well, you know why don't you). When that happens a profiler gives us a log file that we have to download and store locally for further use.

Download the log file and then close business process error popup by pressing ok.

Step 6

Go back to your plugin registration tool and press debug.

Step 7

Replay Plug-in Execution popup opens on the screen. There are three fields that has to be filled.

1. To "Profile" field search the log file you just downloaded in step 5.

2. Assembly Location: To this field you need to search for your plugin's DLL file. When you are building your projects in Visual Studio it creates a debug folder under a bin directory. Use the DLL file from the debug folder.

3. Select the right plugin

Do not press Start Execution yet

Step 8

Open Visual Studio and your plugin solution / project if not already opened.

Add break points to your code. 

So from now on it works as normal debugging. I add one break point to beginning of the plugin.

Step 9

Attach Visual Studio to PluginRegistration process.

When Visual Studio and your plugin solution / project is opened go to Debug -> Attach to process.

Step 10

Select PlugingRegistration.exe from the list. If you have more than one opened at the same time make sure to select a right one. Then press attach. Your Visual Studio will go to a debug mode.

Step 11

This is the moment we've been waiting for. Go back to plugin registration tool and press "Start Execution".

Step 12

Now you can actually debug your code, step by step!

Step 13

Enjoy! When you're done stop profiling and remove profiler. I'm sure you'll find out how, just do the steps in reverse order :)

Final step

Find the problem and fix it.

For those who wonder the problem was that target entity didn't carry full name property because it was not changed and thus not passed for the execution context. That's why we got "The given key was not present in the dictionary"

Final words

Thank you for reading. Hopefully I was able to clear things out. This may seem little overkill but trust me on this, it'll save you a lot of time on a long run.

Please do not pay too much attention to code in this post. I wanted to keep it simple as possible. Don't do what I do, do what I say :)

How to edit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 command bar / ribbon by using Visual Studio 2012 and schemas

How to edit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 command bar / ribbon by using Visual Studio 2012 and schemas

NOTE: Applies also to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and probably to other versions of Visual Studio as well

NOTE: In CRM 2011 what used to be called Ribbon is now basically called Command Bar in CRM 2013 even though it's not basically the same thing. Ribbons are available in CRM 2013 as well (Outlook client for example).

Preface

Usually I would recommend editing MS CRM 2013 / 2011 ribbon / command bar by using 3rd party tools such as Visual Ribbon Editor or Ribbon Workbench.

Sometimes though, it is desired, that editing is made by hand. You'll face these situations more likely when you don't have an access to install 3rd party softwares or you just wanna be hardcore... or any other reason.

I would divide editing (manual editing) process into five steps

1. Create a solution that contains concerned entity and then export the solution.
2. Unzip solution
3. Edit customizations.xml
4. Zip files back to one package
5. Import .zip file back to CRM

While steps 1, 2, 4 and 5 are pretty simple and self explatonary step 3 can be done many different ways.

You could just open Notepad++ and start editing and hope that everything is in place when you import your solution back. Or you could open Visual Studio, attach schemas from the SDK and make your life much easier.

You will need

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK
• Visual Studio 2012 (other versions probably will be fine)
• CRM Online / On-premises

Step 1. Create a solution and export it

The first step is to create a solution that contains entity / entities whose ribbon(s) you want to edit. You could just export the default solution but for the sake of the peace of mind I recommend you to create a new solution that contains only entities you really want to edit. Otherwise your customization.xml will be really big and hard to read (even with modern editors such as Visual Studio). In this example I'm editing account's command bar.

Step 2. Unzip solution

Unzip the solution to any folder you wish. You'll end up with at least these three files

Step 3. Edit customizations.xml

Now this is the part actual work happens. First I want you to open customizations.xml with your Visual Studio.

Then you should open File Properties window. You can open it from View -> Properties Window or by pressing F4.

After that open Schemas window by pressing the button with three dots in it (see picture below).

Now select the following schema files (.xsd files) from the CRM 2013 SDK (SDKFolder\Schemas) by pressing Add... button

Then click OK. Now you may wonder how this will help you. When you attach these schema files to your xml file it tells to Visual Studio automatically check your xml file against schema files. So it's real time validation.

But even better advantage (imo) is that you'll get Intellisense. So no longer you need to constantly go and see what properties are available and for what node. Visual Studio will tell you.

Take this as an example. I want to add new button to account's form. I know that I need to add custom action node under custom actions but I'm not quite sure how to continue from there. I could go to MSDN and find out, or I could save time and let Visual Studio tell me.

So as you can see I wrote only "<" and Visual Studio told me that under CustomerAction node there should be CommandUIDefinition. If I just add CommandUIDefinition and leave it like that Visual Studio can tell me that it is incomplete and that I still need to add something before it matches the schemas.

So it goes without saying that this is really neat feature and it can save you alot of time. The good rule of thumb is that when your xml passes validation it should be okey for importing. But do not take that for granted either.

Step 4. Zip files back to one package.

Again, this should be piece of cake. Just make sure that your folder structure is same than when you unzipped exported solution. Some packaging softwares tend to add one extra root folder if you're not carefull.

Step 5. Import solution (.zip file) back to CRM

Import your solution back to CRM and enjoy your customizations.

More reading

For more reading this is good place to start http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309639.aspx

How to use Regex with GCC 4.8.2

How to use Regex with GCC 4.8.2

My setup:

Operation system: Ubuntu 14.04
Compiler: GCC 4.8.2
IDE: Eclipse 3.8.1

Problem:

I've included regex (#include <regex>) to my header file but my IDE keeps complaining that type of 'something' could not be resolved. I've tried using namespaces such as std:: and std::tr1, like people from google has adviced, with no success.

Solution:

Solution is as simple as the problem itself. If you take a look at usr/include/c++/4.8 you'll notice the regex file in root folder is kind of a stub. However there's another regex file in /tr1 folder.

The trick is, that instead of writing #include <regex>, you should write #include <tr1/regex>

After that you're able to use regex through std::tr1:: namespace.

For exmaple like this: std::tr1::smatch

Hope that helps!