Form scripting

Xrm Object Model

The Xrm object model can be accessed from web resources in your solution. To start using the declaration files, one can drag in a reference to xrm.d.ts which is located in the root folder of the generated files. This contains the base description of the client-side form-scripting API.

The Xrm object model also allows access to entity specific attributes and controls when it is used on a entity-specific page (such as a form). The following section will show an example of this usage on a specific Contact entity form.

Specific Contact Form Example

In this example, we want to add code to the standard Contact form called 'Information', which is of the 'Main' form type. This can be found at Form/contact/Main/Information.d.ts. Simply by adding this to your TypeScript context, you get access to the specific Xrm object model API for that form!

We just need to tell the compiler what page we are currently making logic for (Form.contact.Main.Information), depending on which version of Dynamics Crm you are developing for, there is the following options:

Dynamics CRM v9 and above

var Form = <Form.contact.Main.Information> executionContext.getFormContext();

Note that executionContext is only obtainable as a parameter passed to a function called by CRM.

Below is an example of an initial setup for your code file.

namespace DG.Contact {
    var Form: Form.contact.Main.Information;

    export function onLoad(executionContext: Xrm.ExecutionContext<any,any>) {
    Form = <Form.contact.Main.Information> executionContext.getFormContext();
        // Code here..
    }
}

Note that when adding the function to CRM you have to remember to tick 'Pass execution context as first parameter'

Dynamics CRM v8 and below

// Either declare the Xrm variable to be of the wanted type
declare var Xrm: Xrm<Form.contact.Main.Information>;

// .. or just cast the page itself in a new variable
var Page = <Form.contact.Main.Information> Xrm.Page;

Below is an example of an initial setup for your code file.

namespace DG.Contact {
    declare var Xrm: Xrm<Form.contact.Main.Information>;

    export function onLoad() {
        // Code here..
    }
}

Note when using namespaces, you need to export all functions you want to call outside of it. In this case the onLoad() function needs to be used by CRM, and therefore needs to be exported.

In your desired IDE, you will now get intellisense for that specific contact form, with all of its attributes, controls, tabs and sections:

Each attribute and control on the form will have the correct type, which gives you type safety on the following values and functions!

In case an invalid string is entered as an argument to one of the string-specific functions, it will not be able to match and the compiler will show an error. This makes it easy to see if a string has been entered incorrectly, or if you are trying to access an element that is not present on the form.