While exploring how the advanced warehouse document routing feature worked in order to generate zpl code based on a dataset which can be dynamically defined I kept running into road blocks on using the default D365 code base because of the internal flag being set on this class base. The code that is out of the box really wants to to only be able to print labels and never view them which is kind of silly if you think about it. Of course there is also nothing documented about these classes (yet) on any of the boards, blogs, official channels.
Because of this I thought I would document how the replacement feature within these classes works will allows you to dynamiclly generate ZPL based on a user defined query within the UI. This is quite interesting and could be used elsewhere within the platform to allow you define a custom query and then have a replacement based on it. I know there are many products out there that already do this but figure I would show how to do this on your own as the majority of people still follow the approach of defining the tables and variables that need replaced within the code base (guilty as charged)
Key tables to understand:
WHSLabelLayout: this will house the header record and generic settings for the zpl template
WHSLabelLayoutVersion: this will house the ZPL code and contains the template in which we will need
WHSLabelLayoutDataSource: this will house the dynamics data source query object which can be defined dynamicly from the user but based on the main layouts calling record record.
Key classes to understand:
WhsCustomLabelPrintCommandGenerator: WHS class that will extend the base class WhsLabelPrintCommandGenerator. This class is used to overload some of the methods in order to define a custom query object based on what was defined within WHSLabelLayoutDataSource
WhsLabelPrintCommandGenerator: WHS base class which contains the overall calling logic to generate the labels as well as print them based on being dynamic or out of the box structure.
WhsDocumentRoutingTranslator: WHS translator object which will hold the structure of replacing things like $Table.FieldName$, queryRun or language objects that would be related to the variables.
WhsDocumentRoutingTemplateTranslator: WHS class that will allow you to take the translator, queryRun, zpl template and execute a find and replaced based on dynamic variables defined within the template based on the query structure defined by the user
Whats really great about this approach from MS is that it will basically allow you to apply this logic to any scenario where you want to dynamically define variables based on field listing or methods on tables vs hardcoding a strReplace.
The following will show you how to take a template for a purchase order (PurchTable) which has a custom query and apply it to a zpl template. However it is good to note there is another type of template (out of the box) which I did not tackle.
PurchTable purchTable = PurchTable::find(_purchId);
//find the specific layout we want to use based on the name
WHSLabelLayout labelLayout = WHSLabelLayout::find(WHSLabelLayoutType::CustomLabel, "Purchase orders");
WHSLabelLayoutVersion layoutSourceVersion;
//find the specific layout version which houses the zpl code
select firstonly * from layoutSourceVersion where layoutSourceVersion.LabelLayoutId == labelLayout.LabelLayoutId;
if(purchTable && labelLayout && layoutSourceVersion)
{
//create the initial translator object
WhsDocumentRoutingTranslator translator = WhsDocumentRoutingTranslator::construct();
if (labelLayout.LabelLocale)
{
//define the specific language
translator.withLanguage(labelLayout.LabelLocale);
}
//is the layout a based on a custom template
if (labelLayout.EnableTemplateTranslator)
{
QueryRun queryRun;
Query newQuery;
WHSLabelLayoutDataSource layoutDataSource;
//grab the dynamic query that is defined for the specific label layout
select firstonly DataSourceQuery from layoutDataSource
where layoutDataSource.LabelLayoutDataSourceId == layoutSourceVersion.LabelLayoutId;
if (layoutDataSource && layoutDataSource.DataSourceQuery != conNull())
{
newQuery = new Query(layoutDataSource.DataSourceQuery);
const FieldId RecIdFieldId = 65534; // Platform defined FieldId for RecId field (see Query/Constants.cs in Platform for example)
//add in a filter to the new query object so we pull down the specific record
newQuery.dataSourceNo(1)
.addRange(RecIdFieldId)
.value(queryValue(purchTable.RecId));
}
//convert the query object so we can pass it to the translator
queryRun = new QueryRun(newQuery);
translator.withRecordsFromQueryRun(queryRun);
//define the original layout zpl code that needs to populated with dynamic variables
WHSZPL layoutSource = layoutSourceVersion.zpl;
//define a new translator object for the document routing structure based on the translator object which has our query which needs to be applied to the zpl code source
WhsDocumentRoutingTemplateTranslator newZPLLabels = WhsDocumentRoutingTemplateTranslator::newFromTemplateAndQueryRun(layoutSource, queryRun)
.withTranslator(translator);
//apply the queryRun object to the template via the translator
List labelList = newZPLLabels.translateTemplate();
//convert to string
str zplStringWithData = labelList.toString();
//TODO: now that we have raw dynamic zpl code we can do whatever we want with it. IE Send it to printer, create an image as a print preview, create a pdf, create an event that can manually do things without the build in prompt
}
else
{
//TODO:: what about when a default label is called? need to look into WhsLabelPrintCommandGenerator.printLabels() second half where the it calls the provider to generate the query run
//WHSZPL outputLabel = translator.translate(layoutSource);
//List labelsList = this.translateLabelTemplate();
}
