Using Late-bound constants to remove the need for strings in Dataverse Plugins and Workflows

Have you seen something like this before:

    var name = target.Attributes["abc_fullname"];
    var phone = target.Attributes["abc_phone"];
    var email = target.Attributes["emailaddress1"];
    var property = target.Attributes["abc_proprety"];

Did you spot the issue ?

this code would throw an error because there’s a misspelling in the “property” attribute logical name.

Now imagine dealing with lots of attributes with complex names and never knowing if you have an issue until you run the code and the exception just jumps in your face.

There is a better way to handle this so we can have a cleaner code which is easier to maintain and debug.

One way would be to change these late-bound attributes and use early bound contracts, which is good but it might introduce some complexity that you want to avoid.

The easier and less complex way is to use auto generated late-bound constants.

Here’s how to do that:

Generating Late Bound Constants using XRMToolbox

Open your XRMToolbox and look for a tool called Latebound Constants Generator

It will load all the entities in your connected environment. Now, Check the ones that you need to generate constants for, and click on Generate

Now you have the constants CS files saved, Which will look like this:

Include them in your project and use them to replace the above code with this

    var name = target.Attributes[Customer.FullName];
    var phone = target.Attributes[Customer.PhoneNumber];
    var email = target.Attributes[Customer.EmailPrimary];
    var property = target.Attributes[Customer.Property];

Looks much better, and since this code is auto generated, you can avoid misspellings and easily maintain and debug your code.

Here is a quick comparison between using Late Bound strings and auto generated constants:

I believe using this approach would make it much easier to spot issues and to have a more clean and readable code which is better for your productivity and for those who will need to work on this code after you.

Happy Coding