How to easily get Value and AliasedValue in Dynamics Plugin

 When you work with querying CDS tables you can come across a scenario where you need to join multiple tables using query expression or fetchXml.

• Using Query Expressions

• Using Fetch XML

Aliased Values are wrapper which wraps the actual attribute of the linked entity

How we get Primary entity attribute value & Linked entity attribute value

consider "entity" is an Entity object for the below snippet.

1. Primary entity attribute 

          entity.GetAttributeValue<string>(attributeName)

     

      2. Primary entity attribute 

           entity.GetAttributeValue<AliasedValue>(attributeName).Value

Now how about having an extension method which can handle getting both with of value without any code changes while getting values from the entity

The above snippet also checks whether the attribute is present or not, it can also save lines where we always check whether the attribute is present or not

Usage

• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<string>(attributeName);
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<int>(attributeName);
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<OptionSetValue>(attributeName)?.Value;
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<EntityReference>(attributeName)?.Id
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<Guid?>(attributeName)
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<Guid?>(attributeName)?.ToString()?? string.Empty;
• entity.GetEntityAttributeValue<int?>(attributeName); 

Note: Make type nullable if you don't want the default value to be set,instead you want null values. 

Happy Coding!