Ready to get started?

Learn more:

Dynamics NAV Connectivity Solutions

Query Dynamics NAV Data from Node.js



The API Server exposes Web services that allow connectivity to your data. Use the OData endpoint of the CData API Server to execute CRUD queries to Dynamics NAV data from Node.js.

The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for Dynamics NAV, exposes Dynamics NAV data (or data from any of 200+ other ADO.NET Providers) as an OData endpoint, which can be queried from Node.js using simple HTTP requests. This article shows how to use the API Server to request JSON-formatted Dynamics NAV data in Node.js.

Set Up the API Server

Follow the steps below to begin producing secure Dynamics NAV OData services:

Deploy

The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.

The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.

Connect to Dynamics NAV

After you deploy the API Server and the ADO.NET Provider for Dynamics NAV, provide authentication values and other connection properties needed to connect to Dynamics NAV by clicking Settings -> Connections and adding a new connection in the API Server administration console.

Before you can connect, OData Services will need to be enabled on the server. Once OData Services are enabled, you will be able to query any Services that are published on the server.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Dynamics NAV user credentials. In addition, you will need to specify a URL to a valid Dynamics NAV server organization root and a ServerInstance. If there is not a Service Default Company for the server, you will need to set the Company as well.

You can then choose the Dynamics NAV entities you want to allow the API Server access to by clicking Settings -> Resources.

Authorize API Server Users

After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. Access can also be restricted based on IP address; all IP addresses except the local machine are restricted by default. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL.

Consume Dynamics NAV OData Feeds from Node.js

OData feeds are easy to work with in Node.js. You can use the HTTP client in Node.js to request JSON-formatted data from the API Server's OData endpoint. After making the request, you can construct the body of the response and call the JSON.parse() function to parse it into records.

The code below will make an authenticated request for Customer data. The example URL below applies a simple filter that searches for records with a value of Bob in the Name column.

var http = require('http'); http.get({ protocol: "http:", hostname: "MyServer.com", port: MyPort, path: "/api.rsc/Customer?$filter=" + encodeURIComponent("Name eq 'Bob'"), auth: 'MyUser:MyAuthtoken' }, function(res) { var body = ''; res.on('data', function(chunk) { body += chunk; }); res.on('end', function() { console.log(body); var jsonData = JSON.parse(body); }); }).on('error', function(e) { console.log("Error: ", e); });