Microsoft Dynamics 10 eConnect C# 4.0 .NET Serialization In Memory

*Note* - This code was written for Dynamics GP 10. If you are using Dynamics GP 2010 see this updated article.

I was recently tasked with creating an eConnect integration between Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 and a custom SharePoint 2010 Portal designed to replace the GP Item Maintenance process with workflow and departmental routing.

Most of the eConnect examples I see online serialize the eConnect object to a file before loading it into an XmlDocument. This can cause unnecessary permissions concerns, and worse, if your application runs under the context of IIS or SharePoint you may not have a file system available to you at all. This was the case in my scenario. A much better approach is to serialize the object in memory.

Below is an example of eConnect serialization in memory using Microsoft C# .NET 4.0.

Assuming you have already installed the eConnect SDK 10, reference the following assemblies:

Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.eConnect.dll

Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.eConnect.MiscRoutines.dll

Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.eConnect.Serialization.dll

System.EnterpriseServices.dll

And add the following using statements:

using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.eConnect;
using Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.eConnect.Serialization;

Here is the code to serialize the eConnectType object in memory and load it into an XmlDocument which is then passed to the eConnect_EntryPoint method:

string connectionString = string.Empty; // Set up a valid connection string.

eConnectMethods econnectMethods = new eConnectMethods();
eConnectType eConnectType = new eConnectType();

// Instantiate and populate the specific eConnect types needed.
// Don't forget to add them to eConnectType once they are set up.

// We're done building the object model, now serialize it in memory.
MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(eConnectType.GetType());
xmlSerializer.Serialize(memoryStream, eConnectType);
memoryStream.Position = 0;

// Create a new XmlDocument from the in memory serialized object model.
XmlDocument xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
xmlDocument.Load(memoryStream);
memoryStream.Close();

econnectMethods.eConnect_EntryPoint(connectionString, EnumTypes.ConnectionStringType.SqlClient, xmlDocument.OuterXml, EnumTypes.SchemaValidationType.None, string.Empty);

Hope it helps!