CRM 2011: Getting entity with Javascript

I am working on some CRM 2011 Online customisations and I need to get an entity using javascript.

The entity I need will be based on the ID value of another field (a Contact entity) - this Contact ID I can get fine.

The entity I want is a custom entity. There may be multiple matches based on the Contact ID so I just want to get the first one in the list (order not important)

So far I have looked into a few ways to do this...

OData - I couldn't find enough examples on this as to what query expressions I can create, also I don't know if/how to make this work for custom entities
FetchXML - I can create a nice FetchXML query using the built-in "advanced find" too and would be happy to call this from javascript if anyone can help? I found one promising answer here but I could not see how the "results" return data was being set (Service.Fetch function)
SOAP Request - First thing I tried is a similar method as I could have done in CRM 4 but this does not seem to work. Although the request executes, my result data just seems to be empty. This is all I have code for so if any one can spot a problem with the code below then that would be great.

EDIT: I have spotted some redundant query data (I had removed link opening tags but left closing tags) - since removing this I now get XML result data... however, the where clause does not seem to apply (just get list of all entities)

    var xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>" + 
    "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">" + 
    GenerateAuthenticationHeader() +
    "<soap:Body>" + 
    "<RetrieveMultiple xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">" + 
    "<query xmlns:q1=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/Query\" xsi:type=\"q1:QueryExpression\">" + 
    "<q1:EntityName>new_vehicle</q1:EntityName>" + 
    "<q1:ColumnSet xsi:type='q1:ColumnSet'>" + 
    "<q1:Attributes>" + 
    "<q1:Attribute>new_vehicleid</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>new_primarydriver</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>statuscode</q1:Attribute>" +
    "<q1:Attribute>new_registration</q1:Attribute>" +
    "</q1:Attributes>" + 
    "</q1:ColumnSet>" + 
    "<q1:Distinct>false</q1:Distinct>" + 

    "<q1:Conditions>" + 

                     "<q1:Condition>" +
                     "<q1:AttributeName>new_primarydriver</q1:AttributeName>" +
    "<q1:Operator>Equal</q1:Operator>" +
    "<q1:Values>" +
    "<q1:Value xmlns:q2='http://microsoft.com/wsdl/types/' xsi:type='q2:guid'>" +
    customerID +
    "</q1:Value></q1:Values></q1:Condition>" + 

    "</q1:Conditions>" +

    "</query></RetrieveMultiple>" +
    "</soap:Body></soap:Envelope>";


    var xmlHttpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");

    xmlHttpRequest.Open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx", false);
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/RetrieveMultiple");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
    xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
    xmlHttpRequest.send(xml);

    var result = xmlHttpRequest.responseXML.xml;
    var doc = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument");
    doc.async = false;
    doc.loadXML(result);

    var id = doc.selectSingleNode("//new_vehicleid");
    var registration = doc.selectSingleNode("//new_registration");

    if(id == null)
       return null;

    var vehicle = new Array();
                     value[0] = new Object();
                     value[0].id = id;
                     value[0].name = registration;
                     value[0].entityType = "new_vehicle";

    return vehicle;

Sorry about the big code post but hopefully somebody who has a better understanding can help

Firstly, thanks to GlennFerrieLive for his answer post. The samples I found with the Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK (well just one in particular) really helped and the JSON parser included was perfect for the job!

I am posting this answer to give a full example of how I did it with some important comments to pay attention to which may not be so obvious from the SDK examples.

Get selected ID value from lookup field

The aim of my task was to use javascript to get set a lookup field, based on the selected data of another lookup entity. The entity to set is "new_vehicle" and the entity to query on is "customer".

First job is to get the ID value of the contact lookup field...

var customerItem = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("customerid").getValue();
var customerID = customerItem[0].id;

Querying an entity using an ID

Next is the part where I used the customerID value to find the vehicle that is currently assigned to them (the entity I want to use to set a lookup field).

First problem I found was that when querying with OData, the ID value does not seem to work with curly brackets {} - so these need to be removed...

customerID = customerID.replace('{', '').replace('}', '');

Next we get the oDataPath...

var oDataPath = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/xrmservices/2011/organizationdata.svc";

Then we can construct the OData query...

var filter = "/new_vehicleSet?" +
  "$select=new_vehicleId,new_Registration" + 
  "&$filter=new_PrimaryDriver/Id eq (guid'" + customerID + "')" + 
  "&$orderby=new_LastAllocationDate desc" + 
  "&$top=1";

NOTE: There are a couple of important things to note here...

When using a guid value you must explicitly say it is a guid using (guid'xxx')
When filtering by a lookup entity (e.g. new_PrimaryDriver) you must append the value to query (e.g. Id) - this results in new_PrimaryDriver/Id

Once we have the query setup we can request the data as follows...

var retrieveRecordsReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
retrieveRecordsReq.open("GET", oDataPath + filter, true);
retrieveRecordsReq.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
retrieveRecordsReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
retrieveRecordsReq.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (this.readyState == 4) {
       if (this.status == 200) {
           var retrievedRecords = JSON.parse(retrieveRecordsReq.responseText).d;
           if(retrievedRecords.results.length > 0)
           {
               var vehicle = retrievedRecords.results[0];
               SetLookup("new_replacedvehicle", vehicle.new_vehicleId, vehicle.new_Registration, "new_vehicle");
           }
       }
    }
};
retrieveRecordsReq.send();

Note that this is an asynchronous call and the onreadystatechange function will be processed upon completion, in this function we do a couple of checks to see if it was a success and the we parse the resulting JSON data - the JSON.Parse function has been included at the bottom of this post (but is available from the SDK)

Setting a lookup field using the entity queried above

The other function to make note of here is SetLookup which is just a simple helper function I added to set a lookup field. This is as follows...

function SetLookup(fieldName, idValue, textValue, typeValue)
{
    var value = new Array();
    value[0] = new Object();
    value[0].id = idValue;
    value[0].name = textValue;
    value[0].typename = typeValue;

    Xrm.Page.getAttribute(fieldName).setValue(value);
}

JSON parse function

This is the JSON helper function that was used in the above code (JSON.parse), pasted as it was found in the SDK...

if (!this.JSON) { this.JSON = {}; } (function () { function f(n) { return n < 10 ? '0' + n : n; } if (typeof Date.prototype.toJSON !== 'function') { Date.prototype.toJSON = function (key) { return isFinite(this.valueOf()) ? this.getUTCFullYear() + '-' + f(this.getUTCMonth() + 1) + '-' + f(this.getUTCDate()) + 'T' + f(this.getUTCHours()) + ':' + f(this.getUTCMinutes()) + ':' + f(this.getUTCSeconds()) + 'Z' : null; }; String.prototype.toJSON = Number.prototype.toJSON = Boolean.prototype.toJSON = function (key) { return this.valueOf(); }; } var cx = /[\u0000\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/g, escapable = /[\\\"\x00-\x1f\x7f-\x9f\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/g, gap, indent, meta = { '\b': '\\b', '\t': '\\t', '\n': '\\n', '\f': '\\f', '\r': '\\r', '"': '\\"', '\\': '\\\\' }, rep; function quote(string) { escapable.lastIndex = 0; return escapable.test(string) ? '"' + string.replace(escapable, function (a) { var c = meta[a]; return typeof c === 'string' ? c : '\\u' + ('0000' + a.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-4); }) + '"' : '"' + string + '"'; } function str(key, holder) { var i, k, v, length, mind = gap, partial, value = holder[key]; if (value && typeof value === 'object' && typeof value.toJSON === 'function') { value = value.toJSON(key); } if (typeof rep === 'function') { value = rep.call(holder, key, value); } switch (typeof value) { case 'string': return quote(value); case 'number': return isFinite(value) ? String(value) : 'null'; case 'boolean': case 'null': return String(value); case 'object': if (!value) { return 'null'; } gap += indent; partial = []; if (Object.prototype.toString.apply(value) === '[object Array]') { length = value.length; for (i = 0; i < length; i += 1) { partial[i] = str(i, value) || 'null'; } v = partial.length === 0 ? '[]' : gap ? '[\n' + gap + partial.join(',\n' + gap) + '\n' + mind + ']' : '[' + partial.join(',') + ']'; gap = mind; return v; } if (rep && typeof rep === 'object') { length = rep.length; for (i = 0; i < length; i += 1) { k = rep[i]; if (typeof k === 'string') { v = str(k, value); if (v) { partial.push(quote(k) + (gap ? ': ' : ':') + v); } } } } else { for (k in value) { if (Object.hasOwnProperty.call(value, k)) { v = str(k, value); if (v) { partial.push(quote(k) + (gap ? ': ' : ':') + v); } } } } v = partial.length === 0 ? '{}' : gap ? '{\n' + gap + partial.join(',\n' + gap) + '\n' + mind + '}' : '{' + partial.join(',') + '}'; gap = mind; return v; } } if (typeof JSON.stringify !== 'function') { JSON.stringify = function (value, replacer, space) { var i; gap = ''; indent = ''; if (typeof space === 'number') { for (i = 0; i < space; i += 1) { indent += ' '; } } else if (typeof space === 'string') { indent = space; } rep = replacer; if (replacer && typeof replacer !== 'function' && (typeof replacer !== 'object' || typeof replacer.length !== 'number')) { throw new Error('JSON.stringify'); } return str('', { '': value }); }; } if (typeof JSON.parse !== 'function') { JSON.parse = function (text, reviver) { var j; function walk(holder, key) { var k, v, value = holder[key]; if (value && typeof value === 'object') { for (k in value) { if (Object.hasOwnProperty.call(value, k)) { v = walk(value, k); if (v !== undefined) { value[k] = v; } else { delete value[k]; } } } } return reviver.call(holder, key, value); } text = String(text); cx.lastIndex = 0; if (cx.test(text)) { text = text.replace(cx, function (a) { return '\\u' + ('0000' + a.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)).slice(-4); }); } if (/^[\],:{}\s]*$/.test(text.replace(/\\(?:["\\\/bfnrt]|u[0-9a-fA-F]{4})/g, '@').replace(/"[^"\\\n\r]*"|true|false|null|-?\d+(?:\.\d*)?(?:[eE][+\-]?\d+)?/g, ']').replace(/(?:^|:|,)(?:\s*\[)+/g, ''))) { j = eval('(' + text + ')'); return typeof reviver === 'function' ? walk({ '': j }, '') : j; } throw new SyntaxError('JSON.parse'); }; } } ());

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