AL Toolbox for Visual Studio Code

Please visit https://www.altoolbox.com/ for more in depth information and AL Language tips and tricks.

Features

• Regions Pre AL Language 6.0
• Custom Region Colors
• Snippets
• Actions
• Added Code Cop Warning

Quick Overview Features

• Custom Color of Regions
• Quickfixes: Surround with CopyStr
• Quickfixes: Pragma Warnings
• Action: Create Region
• Action: Renumber AL Objects
• Action: Change Object Prefix
• Action: Create Related Tables
• Action: Open Related Tables
• Action: Copy Fields Related Tables
• Action: Init Git Ignore
• Action: Generate SetLoadFields
• Region Functionality for PRE AL Language 6.0
• Settings
• Known Issues

Custom Color of Regions

You can change the color in UserSettings

Quickfixes: Surround with CopyStr

Automatic fix for AL(AA0139)

Pragma Warnings

Every warning/information line will now show a CodeAction to surround with Pragma to ignore it. So that warnings that you can do nothing about can be ignored easily.

• Example:
• Click the Lightbulb:
• Result:

Some variants on the above Pragma CodeAction were added as well:

• Surround ### with Pragma & add TODO tag (with comment)

• Surround ### with Pragma (in all documents)

  Action: Create Region

• ALTB: Create regions for all AL functions and triggers | Running this command will generate Regions around all Functions that don't have regions yet.

• ALTB: Create regions for all AL dataitems and columns | Running this command will generate Regions around all Dataitems and Columns in a report.

• ALTB: Create regions for all AL functions, triggers, dataitems, and columns | Combination of the previous 2.

  Action: Renumber AL Objects

• ALTB: Renumber AL Objects | This function will renumber your objects based on the number ranges in the App.json

  • Objects will be numbered in ascending order stating with the lowest number in first available range. The ranges are taken from idRange(s) in the app.json file.
  • Extension objects will be added to the 80,000-89,999 range if 80,000 is in the available ranges. If not the same is done as for the other objects.

• ALTB: Renumber fields | Renumbers field numbers in the active editor

• ALTB: Renumber all fields | Renumbers fields in all tables and table extensions objects (in all workspace folders).

  Action: Change Object Prefix

• ALTB: Change Object Prefix | This function will ask you what the new prefix should be and rename all your objects and the settings.json.

  Action: Create Related Tables

  This will create a set of tableextensions that should have the same fields so that there is no issue when standard code issues a TransferFields().

Action: Open Related Tables

• ALTB: Open Related Tables/Pages | This function will open the related tables/pages for the object you are working on, so you can easily copy paste fields between the related tables of Sales Header for example.

  Action: Copy Fields Related Tables

• ALTB: Copy fields to related tables | This will copy al fields from the current table to all related tables. If there are conflicts you will get a popup that allows you to navigate to them:

Action: Init Git Ignore

• ALTB: init .gitignore | Creates the following .gitignore in the current workspace folder or appends the missing lines to the existing .gitignore

  # ALTB
  .alpackages/
  .alcache/
  .altemplates/
  .altestrunner/
  *.json
  !app.json
  rad.json
  *.app
  *.g.xlf

  Action: Generate SetLoadFields

  ALTB: Generate SetLoadFields | Creates SetLoadFields or adds missing fields to SetLoadFields for a record.

  • Looks for a record at the current mouse position.
  • Only works for local records.
  • For each Get, Find, FindFirst, ... a SetLoadFields function is generated the line before it, unless it already exists.
  • All used fields are added. Assignment is not seen as usage.

    Region Functionality for PRE AL Language 6.0

Either //#Region or the default #Region can be used with this extension. The snippets/actions will adjust automatically according to the runtime you are using.

Region will now be colored like //#Region; you can change the colors in the User Setup

Settings

• ALTB.UseOldFileNamingConventions | Boolean: default true

  • Use <ObjectPrefix>(<ExtenedObjectId>-Ext)?<ObjectId>.<ObjectNameExcludingPrefix>.al instead of <ObjectNameExcludingPrefix>.<FullTypeName>(Ext)?.al for file names.

• ALTB.PutCreatedRelatedObjectsInSeparateFolders | Boolean: default false

  • If false all objects created with 'ALTB: Start Project: Create Related Tables' are put in there respective object folder. If true each group of related objects is put in a subfolder of that object folder.

• ALTB.AdditionalRelatedObjects | List: default []

  • Adds additional related pages and tables. These are used while navigating and creating related tables. Note that this only works for PageExtensions and TableExtensions, not your own Pages and Tables. A more indepth explanation can be found in the 'Related Objects' section below.

• ALTB.DisableAPIEntityWarnings | Boolean: default false

  • Disables error messages for duplicate EntityName and/or EntitySetName from API pages that have the same APIPublisher, APIGroup, and APIVersion

• ALTB.UseAlRegions | Boolean: default true

  • Use the standard AL regions instead of the regions previously used by this extension (No longer with '//'). This will only have effect if the runtime in app.json is higher than or equal to 6.0.

• ALTB.DisableCustomFolding | Boolean: default false

  • Disable all folding provided by this extension (requires reload).

• ALTB.RegionColor | Color: default #569CD6 ~ blue

  • Region marker color ((//)?#(end)?region). Set to "" to disable coloring.

• ALTB.RegionTextColor | Color: default #D4D4D4 ~ white

  • Color of text after region markers. Set to "" to disable coloring.

• ALTB.DisableHoverProviders | Boolean: default false

  • AL Toolbox shows the field description on hover.

• ALTB.CheckCommentTranslations | Boolean: default false

  • Checks if label comments match the format required by the 'AL Language Tools' extension for generating XLIFF files

• ALTB.SnippetTargetLanguage | String: default NLB

  • Primary target language identifier used for translations in snippets. Supported formats: xx-XX or XXX (for example: nl-BE or NLB)

• ALTB.SnippetTargetLanguage2 | String: default FRB

  • Secondary target language identifier used for translations in snippets. Supported formats: xx-XX or XXX (for example: fr-BE or FRB)

• ALTB.TelemetryIdentifier | String: default External

  • Custom identifier for Application Insights to identify internal/external telemetry

• ALTB.DisableSnippets

  • Disables all snippets provided by ALTB.

• ALTB.UseSimpleFunctionSnippets

  • Simplifies function snippets so a custom completion provider can be used.

• ALTB.SourceCodeFolderName

  • Specifies in which folder of the current workspace the source code files are located.

Known Issues

• ALTB: Renumber AL Objects

  • Extension objects will be added to the 80,000-89,999 range if 80,000 is in the available ranges. So if only the range 80,000-80,100 is in the ranges objects will still get ids greater than 80,100.
  • If there exist one or more extension objects of the same type where the last 4 digits of the ids are the same, then they will receive the same id. e.g.: extension objects with id 36 and 2,000,036 will both receive 80,036 as id.
  • Extension objects will not be renumbered if they don't have a original object number after there definition and 80,000 is in the available ranges. Format example: pageextension 80021 "EXTCustomerCard" extends "Customer Card" //21

• ALTB: Change Object Prefix

  • This will only change the prefix of object names and fields. So not for actions, events subscribers, parts on pages, keys...

• ALTB: Generate SetLoadFields

  • If there's a Get, Find, ... in a statement over multiple lines, the genered code can be incorrect. e.g:

    if
        RecVar.Get()
    then
        TestFunction(RecVar.TestField);
    
    // Will genereate:
    if
        RecVar.SetLoadFields(TestField);
        RecVar.Get()
    then
        TestFunction(RecVar.TestField);

Folding with Regions Example

Related Objects

To add additional related objects use the ALTB.AdditionalRelatedObjects setting.

Example format:

[
    {  // For adding tableextensions
        "folder": "SalesHeader", // subfolder of src where to place the objects when using "ALTB: Start Project: Create Related Tables"
        "objectType": "tableextension",
        "objects": [ // these tables will be considered related
            { "id": 36, "name": "Sales Header" },
            { "id": 110, "name": "Sales Shipment Header" },
            { "id": 112, "name": "Sales Invoice Header" },
            { "id": 114, "name": "Sales Cr.Memo Header" },
            { "id": 5107, "name": "Sales Header Archive" },
            { "id": 6660, "name": "Return Receipt Header" }
        ]
    },
    ...
    {  // For adding pageextensions
        "table": "Contact",  // source table of pageextension
        "folder": "Contact",   // subfolder of src where to place the objects when using "ALTB: Start Project: Create Related Tables"
        "objectType": "pageextension",
        "objects": [  // pages for the source table
            { "id": 5050, "name": "Contact Card" },
            { "id": 5052, "name": "Contact List" }
        ]
    },
    ...
]

The default related objects can be found in src/constants.js in the AL-toolbox repository (search for RelatedObjects).

Contributers

• Kasper De Smedt
• Kris Jordaens
• Daan Saveyn
• Johannes Wikman (jwikman)
• Frédéric Vercaemst (fvet)

Special Thanks

Special thanks to ESC BV for investing in this tool! https://esc.be/