If you have been around for some time in the Dynamics world as a developer you most certainly are familiarized with HTML Web Resources and all the flexibility that its usage brings upon us, but what you might not know is the fact that slowly Microsoft is deprecating some client APIs that will hinder the use of HTML Web Resources significantly, you can find more info about Microsoft’s official announcement here.
If you are still using HTML Web Resources you might already have noticed that several client APIs are not available anymore such as:
- Xrm.Page
- parent.Xrm
- ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx
- formContext.data.entity.save
- Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm
- Xrm.Utility.openWebResource
- Xrm.Utility.openQuickCreate
Among many others that you can see it here.
And let’s be honest, HTML Web Resources could be a bit problematic, I suppose that having to deal with all the IFrame limitations and the data transferring between the different contexts wasn’t the happiest moments for anyone. With that in mind and the desire to share components across Model Driven Apps and Canvas Apps that Power Apps Components Framework aka PCF comes in play.
PCF empowers professional developers and app makers to create code components for model-driven and canvas apps (public preview) to provide enhanced user experience for the users to work with data on forms, views, and dashboards, in a nutshell PCF is how you will build custom interfaces within the Power Platform instead of the old HTML Web Resources and that’s why you should know about it.
Unlike HTML web resources, code components are rendered as a part of the same context, load at the same time as any other components, providing a seamless experience for the users.
Developers can bundle all the HTML, CSS, and TypeScript files into a single solution package file and move across environments and also shipped via AppSource.
Code components can be reused many times across different entities and forms. Use Power Apps component framework to create code components that can be used across the full breadth of Power Apps capabilities.
Advantages
- Access to a rich set of framework APIs that expose capabilities like component lifecycle management, contextual data, and metadata.
- Seamless server access via Web API, utility and data formatting methods, device features like camera, location and microphone, along with easy-to-invoke UX elements like dialogs, lookups, and full-page rendering.
- Support for modern web practices.
- Optimizes for performance.
- Reusability
- Bundle all files into a single solution file.
I Intend to release a series of posts about PCF helping you out since the creation all the way to the deployment of a PCF, so stay tuned.
