PACX ⁓ WebResource Management Commands - Create JS

In this post I subtly introduced a few PACX commands created to streamline WebResource development lifecycle.

On the previous one we've seen how I like to setup my WebResource project.

Now let's deep dive on creating JS Web Resources to be bound to Forms or Ribbon (command bar) commands.

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📃 pacx webresources js create

This command has a few aliases pacx webresources js create, pacx wr js create, pacx wr create js. It can be used to create a JS file that can be used in:

• forms
• command bar for a given table
• global command bar

...or generic utility files, starting from a predefined, fixed template.

The default templates for each type of JS WebResource are described here.

To create a JS WebResource for a form you can use:

pacx wr js create --for Form --table Account

To create a JS WebResource for a specific table ribbon, you can use:

pacx wr js create --for Ribbon --table Account

To create a JS WebResource for a global ribbon, you can use:

pacx wr js create --for Ribbon

To create a generic JS WebResource, you can use:

pacx wr js create --for Ribbon

When creating JS WebResources for Dataverse, is a best practice to enclose the classes and function definitions in namespaces to avoid collisions with out of the box stuff, or classes / functions defined by other customizers. The predefined template for each type of JS WebResource described above accepts the --namespace as input argument. If not provided, the publisher prefix of the publisher of the default solution for the environment is used (unless you specify a different solution via --solution argument).

👨🏻‍💻 I don't like the default template. Can I change it?

Sure you can! Via pacx webresources js setTemplate command you can update the default templates. E.g.

pacx wr js setTemplate --type Form --file myCustomFormTemplate.js
pacx wr js setTemplate --type Ribbon --file myCustomGlobalRibbonTemplate.js
pacx wr js setTemplate --type Ribbon --forTable --file myCustomTableRibbonTemplate.js
pacx wr js setTemplate --type Other --file myGenericTemplate.js

In custom templates you can use %NAMESPACE% and %TABLE% as placeholders where to put the namespace and the name of the table passed as inputs to pacx wr js create command.

👨🏻‍💻 Nice! Now that I've changed the default templates, I liked more the original ones. Can I rollback to the default?

Of course you can, via pacx webresources js resetTemplate

pacx wr js resetTemplate --type Form
pacx wr js resetTemplate --type Ribbon
pacx wr js resetTemplate --type Ribbon --forTable
pacx wr js resetTemplate --type Other

It will restore the default template, overwriting your changes.

🏃🏻 What's next?

In the next article of this series we'll see how to push WebResources to Dataverse with minimum effort.