Sunday 31 January 2016

X++ in AX7: Method signatures

This post is about one of the more subtle changes in AX7. AX7 uses the .NET runtime, aka CLR. This has some implications for method signatures. In the CLR a method's signature includes casing, parameters and return type. In AX2012 a method's signature was simply the method's name – case insensitive.


Why is this important? If you change a method's signature, then all references to the method needs to be recompiled. Including those changes that appear harmless, like:


  • Fixing a casing issue in a method name, e.g. "somemethod" -> "someMethod".
  • Changing return type from void to <something>

Here is an example, where I changed the casing of a method, that is being consumed by a test. I did NOT recompile the test before running it.


Notice the System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'Void Dynamics.AX.Application.MyClass.myMethod()'. The CLR only knows of a method with all lower case.







Optional parametersIt is still safe to add and remove (unused) optional parameters. The X++ compiler uses CLR's method overloading, i.e. several methods with the same name and the variations of supported parameters are produced by the compiler.



Lesson to learnDo not change a method's signature, unless you are willing (and able) to recompile all consumers.

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