Bug: EntityReference, Create and latebinding

For big projects and large code sizes, it is recommended to use strongly typed classes when you are dealing with CRUD operations related to the CRM entities. You can use Early Bound Generator or “crmsvcutil” to do this. The advantages are compile type errors for mismatches types and intellisense. But if you are quickly testing out some code, latebinding is the easiest path, as it doesn’t involve the overhead of generating the classes. During this process, I discovered a bug.

Here is the code and I will explain the bug after that.

            CrmServiceClient crmSvc = new CrmServiceClient(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["CRMConnectionString"].ConnectionString);
            if (crmSvc.IsReady)
            {
                #region create contact with account entityreference

                var account = new Entity("account");
                account["name"] = "Test Account";
                account.Id = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Create(account);
                Console.WriteLine($"Created account with id {account.Id}");

                Console.WriteLine("Creating contact with account as EntityReference");
                Console.WriteLine("----------------------------------------------------");

                var contact = new Entity("contact");
                contact["parentcustomerid"] = account.ToEntityReference();
                contact.Id = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Create(contact);
                Console.WriteLine($"Created contact with id {contact.Id}");

                contact = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Retrieve("contact", contact.Id, new ColumnSet("parentcustomerid"));
                Console.WriteLine($"Contact: Account Lookup {contact.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("parentcustomerid")?.Id}");

                #endregion

                #region update contact with account Guid

                Console.WriteLine("Updating contact with account as Guid");
                Console.WriteLine("----------------------------------------------------");
                try
                {
                    contact["parentcustomerid"] = account.Id;
                    crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Update(contact);
                    var updateContact = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Retrieve("contact", contact.Id, new ColumnSet("parentcustomerid"));
                    Console.WriteLine($"Updated Contact: Account Lookup {updateContact.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("parentcustomerid")?.Id}");
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine($"Update Contact failed with Exception: {e.Message}");
                }

                crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Delete("contact", contact.Id);
                Console.WriteLine($"Deleted contact with id {contact.Id}");

                #endregion

                #region create contact with account Guid

                Console.WriteLine("\nCreating contact with account as Guid");
                Console.WriteLine("----------------------------------------------------");
                contact = new Entity("contact");
                contact["parentcustomerid"] = account.Id;
                //This should not succeed
                contact.Id = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Create(contact);
                Console.WriteLine($"Created contact with id {contact.Id}");

                contact = crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Retrieve("contact", contact.Id, new ColumnSet("parentcustomerid"));
                Console.WriteLine($"Contact: Account Lookup {contact.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("parentcustomerid")?.Id}");

                crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Delete("contact", contact.Id);
                Console.WriteLine($"Deleted contact with id {contact.Id}");

                crmSvc.OrganizationServiceProxy.Delete("account", account.Id);
                Console.WriteLine($"\nDeleted account with id {account.Id}");

                #endregion

            }

Here is the result.

Even if you are using latebinding, CRM webservice respects type and doesn’t allow you to set an attribute to a type, that doesn’t match its definition, except in one case: You can set the EntityReference attribute to a Guid, and the code with execute without any exception. The good thing though is the fields is just set to null, and the Guid is ignored, but this a bug as you cannot do it with other types e.g. you can’t set an Optionset field to an int or a Currency field to a decimal.

I have logged this on Connect for verification. I experienced this behaviour in CRMOnline and CRM2015.

Connect issue -> https://connect.microsoft.com/site687/feedback/details/2740732/sdk-permits-setting-entityreference-attribute-to-guid-late-binding

Further reading:

MSDN: Create, retrieve, update, and delete (late bound)