Partager via

Working with CRM Form Lookup Controls Programmatically

  • Article

Lately, I have been asked a number of times about how to programmatically work with Lookup controls on CRM forms. Basically, you can read values from and set new values to almost all of the CRM form controls, including Lookups. You can write Jscript code that runs on CRM OnLoad/OnSave/OnChange form Events and manipulate the values of form controls programmatically. Among lots of useful benefits of our form (a.k.a. client side) programming model, JScripts are particularly useful for data validation and setting default values (other examples are accessing rich functionality hosted on a web service as shown in one of my earlier blogs).

BTW: We do have some of this info already documented in the SDK docs and we will update the next refresh with all of these samples. I thought I give you a headstart given the number of questions and emails I received.

Here are some samples, one for read and one for write:

//Reading values from a Lookup control named primarycontatctid on the Account form

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

var lookupItem = new Array;

// This will get the lookup for the attribute primarycontactid on the Account form.

lookupItem = crmForm.all.primarycontactid.DataValue;

// If there is data in the field, show it in a series of alerts.

if (lookupItem && lookupItem[0] != null)

{

    // The text value of the lookup.

    alert(lookupItem[0].name);

    // The entity type name.

    alert(lookupItem[0].typename);

    // The GUID of the lookup.

    alert(lookupItem[0].id);

    // The entity type code of the lookup: 1=account, 2= contact.

    alert(lookupItem[0].type);

}

//Setting values to pricelevelid lookup control on the Opportunity form.

//In this example, the price level is set to Retail.

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------

//Create a lookupItem to store the values that you want to set to a target Lookup control

var lookupItem = new Array();

// Values on the signature of LookupControlItem are: GUID of pricelevel, type code of pricelevel and finally the name of the lookup value

lookupItem[0] = new LookupControlItem ("{F31BB38A-0EC0-403F-99A6-3AF469D7D76E}", 1022, "Retail");

//Set the form control value to the lookupItem just created

crmForm.all.pricelevelid.DataValue = lookupItem ;

 

BTW this code also works for CustomerId fields on the form (a common question:-))

 

Happy coding:-)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2006
    Thanks to Alex from Intellagentsolutions.com, I have updated the sample to cover for the case when the lookup is empty.
  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2006
    I have a question, on top of reading the values from a Lookup control, can I read other attributes of the Lookup control?

    For example, the primarycontactid lookup is from ANOTHER entity named "Contacts", which have other attributes like "First Name" and "Last Name". Can I read these values using JScript?

    Thanks.
  • Anonymous
    June 26, 2006
    In order to read more attributes of the entity that lookup is pointing to, you need to make a web service call to get thoes attributes.  Making a Retreive call should give you what you need and you can do it either throuhg JScript or in a web service that your JScript calls into.
  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2006
    I have no words to express how much great work is this. I been searching for this for few days and finally you took me out of it.
    THANKS A LOT
    :)
  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2006

    Hello JScript friends,
    I am back from vacation and back again to enjoy you with some interesting...
  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2006
    The blog is great but my only problem is when on any screen even f one of the lookUp values are entered from the form assistant then the Onchange event of any other Lookup field is not triggered.

    Any help on this is appreciated.
  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2006
    Newbee
    What form and field do you see that behaviour on?  generally onchange events should fire no matter if the value is changed directly or via form assistant.  Feel free to email me directly.
  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2006
    You saved my day!

    Excellent :)))
  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2006
    Hello JScript friends, I'm back from vacation and back again to enjoy some interesting jscript stuff
  • Anonymous
    November 01, 2006
    Wow, that saved me ton of timeThanks!!!
  • Anonymous
    November 29, 2006
    How can I set null values to a lookup control?
  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2009
    PingBack from http://workfromhomecareer.info/story.php?id=31446