Step 4 – Convert C/AL to AL with Visual Studio Code

The ForNAV standard reports are in public preview. We have just released CTP2 and now we want to start testing them with Visual Studio Code. In order to do that we have to convert them to AL objects.

Microsoft is kind enough to provide tooling which you can find on the June update for the developers preview.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nav/2017/06/20/nav-development-preview-june-update/

The tool is a small .exe file you can find in the same folder as your finsql.exe and called txt2al.exe. It is documented on MSDN.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/newdev-txt2al-tool

The tool takes a NAV txt object but it has to be exported using the MS-DOS command prompt using a special option.

Because it is a lot to write down I’ve actually recorded a 30 minutes video and posted it on YouTube. This video shows the commands, shows the differences in beyond compare and tells you how to make the tool run, test and put it on GitHub using a folder structure that makes sense. At least in my opinion.

Here is the video

And here is the text from my Convert.Bat file

finsql.exe Command=ExportToNewSyntax, File="D:\CAL\fornav.txt", Database="Demo Database NAV (10-0)", ServerName=.\NAVDEMO, filter="ID=70000..79999", Logfile=D:\Log_ExportFile.txt

pause

txt2al --source=D:\CAL\ --target=D:\AL\ --rename --extensionStartID 70070000

pause