Tag Archives: Constants

CrmSvcUtil Attribute Constant Generator Extension

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A recent question on the CRM MSDN forum made me realise that as far as I can see, no-one has yet created a CrmSvcUtil extension to generate attribute constants. So I did.

Download the CrmSvcUtil extension at codeplex: CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants.

To use the extension:

  1. Copy GenerateAttributeConstants.dll into the directory containing CrmSvcUtil.exe
  2. Run CrmSvcUtil with the following parameters:
CrmSvcUtil.exe ^
/codecustomization:"GenerateAttributeConstants.CodeCustomizationService, GenerateAttributeConstants" ^
/codewriterfilter:"GenerateAttributeConstants.FilteringService, GenerateAttributeConstants" ^
/url:http://servername/orgname/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc ^
/out:Attributes.cs

The baseTypes parameter is optional and can be used to override the base types for entity classes which is needed if you have previously generated the wrapper classes with an extension (eg. Microsoft.Xrm.Client.CodeGeneration.CodeCustomization).

To use the generated attribute constants:

Contact contact = new Contact();
contact.Attributes[Contact.firstnameAttribute] = "Michael";
contact.Attributes[Contact.lastnameAttribute] = "Palmer";