Field 19 of 43. Typed by hand. From a JSON response.
That was the moment I stopped accepting the workflow and started building something better.
Business Central development carries a lot of invisible overhead, and none of it is the hard part. It's the boilerplate, the folder setup, the JSON-to-AL mapping, the constant Postman context switching. Mechanical work that consumes focus without earning it.
I spent six months building BC HERO: a free VS Code extension with seven tools that eliminate the most painful parts of the AL development workflow.
What's inside:
🗂️ Quick Project Setup — select your AL component folders, preview the structure, generate in one click. No more five-minute directory rituals.
🧱 AL Object Creator — all 16 AL object types, guided form, auto-calculated next available ID, batch queue. Generate everything in one pass.
⚡ JSON → AL Generator — drop a JSON file (plain objects, arrays, OData { "value": [...] } all work). BC HERO infers AL types, lets you customise, outputs syntax-highlighted AL. 30 fields in about 3 minutes instead of 25.
🔌 API Explorer — full HTTP client inside VS Code. Scans your workspace for API pages and queries. Basic Auth and OAuth 2.0. I haven't opened Postman for a BC project since I built this.
🌍 Translation Assistant — visual XLIFF editor with progress bars, inline editing, validation, and batch updates. A 200-unit review cycle went from over an hour to under 20 minutes.
📊 Schema Viewer — interactive force-directed graph of your table relationships with field metadata sidebar. First thing I open in an unfamiliar codebase.
🔗 Dependency Graph — visualization of every object in your workspace, color-coded by type, with directed dependency edges.
It's free and always will be.
Full story and design rationale on my blog 👉 blog link
VS Code Marketplace 👉 https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yahyatouil.bc-hero
GitHub (issues, roadmap) 👉 https://github.com/yahyatouil-dev/bc-hero-info
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