Displaying Dynamics CRM FetchXML results in ASPX with XSLT

Last week I wrote a post that showed how to retrive the raw SOAP response from a Dynamics CRM query in C#, but I didn't show how to do anything useful with it. In today's post I will show a practical example of how to execute a FetchXML request against a Dynamics CRM instance, capture the raw SOAP response and transform it with XSLT for display in an ASPX page. For demonstration purposes, I will be using the same query and XSL as I used in my "Displaying FetchXML results with XSLT on the client side in a Dynamics CRM 2011 web resource" post.

In this example I am using a WSDL-based proxy instead of the CRM SDK, but all of the code I am sharing can be easily modified to work with the SDK instead.

My ASPX page has five controls:

1. xmlTextBox textbox to input the FetchXML query
2. xslTextBox textbox to input the XSL for the transformation
3. executeButton button to retrieve and transform the data
4. resultsTextBox textbox to show the SOAP response
5. resultsLiteral literal to show the transformed data

When the executeButton button is clicked, the following steps take place:

1. Set up a WCF client connection to the CRM OrganizationService (with client message inspector as described in my last post)
2. Retrieve the results for the supplied FetchXML query
3. Show the SOAP response
4. Transform the SOAP response using the supplied XSL
5. Show the transformed results

Here's the code:

/// <summary>
/// executes retrieve and transform functionality
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender"></param>
/// <param name="e"></param>
protected void executeButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
	OrganizationServiceClient client = SetupClient();
	string results = RetrieveData(this.xmlTextBox.Text, client);

	string xsl = this.xslTextBox.Text;
	this.resultsTextBox.Text = results;
	this.resultsLiteral.Text = DoTransform(results, xsl);
}

/// <summary>
/// instantiates an OrganizationServiceClient object for the username/password/organization service specified as constants
/// </summary>
/// <returns></returns>
private OrganizationServiceClient SetupClient()
{
	ClientCredentials credentials = new ClientCredentials();
	credentials.UserName.UserName = UserName; //UserName is a constant
	credentials.UserName.Password = UserPassword; //UserPassword is a constant

	OrganizationServiceClient client = new OrganizationServiceClient("CustomBinding_IOrganizationService",
		new EndpointAddress(OrganizationServiceUrl)); //OrganizationServiceUrl is a constant
	client.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = credentials.UserName.UserName;
	client.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = credentials.UserName.Password;
	return client;
}

/// <summary>
/// executes a fetchxml query with a given org service client and returns the SOAP response as a string
/// </summary>
/// <param name="fetchXml">query</param>
/// <param name="client">client</param>
/// <returns>response</returns>
string RetrieveData(string fetchXml, OrganizationServiceClient client)
{
	string response = "";

	//set up a client message inspector for the query
	//see http://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/21/Accessing-raw-SOAP-requests-responses-from-Dynamics-CRM-web-services-in-C.aspx
	MyInspector inspector = new MyInspector();
	client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(inspector);

	//build the fetchxml
	FetchExpression fetch = new FetchExpression();
	fetch.Query = fetchXml;
	EntityCollection entities = client.RetrieveMultiple(fetch);

	//if there is a captured response
	if (inspector.receivedMessages.Count == 1)
	{
		response = inspector.receivedMessages[0];
	}

	//return it
	return response;
}

/// <summary>
/// transforms supplied results xml with supplied xsl
/// </summary>
/// <param name="results">input xml</param>
/// <param name="xsl">xsl style sheet</param>
/// <returns>transformed output</returns>
string DoTransform(string results, string xsl)
{
	//create an xmldocument from the input xml
	System.Xml.XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
	xmlDoc.LoadXml(results);

	//create an xmldocument from the input xsl
	System.Xml.XmlDocument xslDoc = new XmlDocument();
	xslDoc.LoadXml(xsl);

	//load a compiled xsl transform object from the xsl document
	XslCompiledTransform transform = new XslCompiledTransform();
	transform.Load(xslDoc);
	
	//prepare stringwriter and xmlwriter get string output from transformation
	StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
	XmlWriter xwriter = XmlWriter.Create(sw);
	
	//execute the transformation
	transform.Transform(xmlDoc, xwriter);
	
	//return the output
	string output = sw.ToString();
	return output;
}

My .aspx and .aspx.cs files are attached here for reference.

1. DisplayXml.aspx (3.16 kb)
2. DisplayXml.aspx.cs (4.95 kb)