Question

I’m trying to bind a plugin to the update contact event in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
I’ve made a plugin and i already registered the assembly and step for my organisation.

screenshot: CRM registration tool

For this moment, i’m using sample code for my plugin.

public class Plugin : IPlugin
{
    public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
    {
        IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)
        serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));

    Entity entity;

    // Check if the input parameters property bag contains a target
    // of the create operation and that target is of type Entity.
    if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") &&
    context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)
    {
        // Obtain the target business entity from the input parameters.
        entity = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];

        // Verify that the entity represents a contact.
        if (entity.LogicalName != "contact") { return; }
    }
    else
    {
        return;
    }

    try
    {
        IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory =
            (IOrganizationServiceFactory)serviceProvider.GetService(
        typeof(IOrganizationServiceFactory));
        IOrganizationService service =
        serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(context.UserId);

        var id = (Guid)context.OutputParameters["id"];

        AddNoteToContact(service, id);
    }
    catch (FaultException<OrganizationServiceFault> ex)
    {
        throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException(
        "An error occurred in the plug-in.", ex);
    }
}

private static void AddNoteToContact(IOrganizationService service, Guid id)
{
    using (var crm = new XrmServiceContext(service))
    {

        var contact = crm.ContactSet.Where(
        c => c.ContactId == id).First();
        Debug.Write(contact.FirstName);

        var note = new Annotation
        {
            Subject = "Created with plugin",
            NoteText = "This Note was created by the example plug-in",
            ObjectId = contact.ToEntityReference(),
            ObjectTypeCode = contact.LogicalName
        };

        crm.AddObject(note);
        crm.SaveChanges();
    }

}
}

But every time i modify a contact form and save it, i get this error:

The given key was not present in the dictionary

I’ve been looking for answers for a week now. I hope there is someone here who can guide me to the sollution for this problem. I can give every code or information you need. But for now, i can’t think of anything more that maybe can help you to see where my error is located. Any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

M.Medhat is absolutely correct, but let’s expand on it a bit more so you understand.

The first thing that you need to know is the difference between InputParameters vrs OutputParameters. A quick read at this MSDN article describing the difference between InputParameters and OutputParameters.

Make sure to note this statement:

If a plug-in is registered for a pre-event, the OutputParameters property bag would not contain a value for the “id” key because the core operation would not yet have occurred.

Hence, this code would break:

var id = (Guid)context.OutputParameters["id"];

Since you’ve already created an entity (by casting it off of InputParameters) you could delete that line and do something like this:

AddNoteToContact(service, entity.id);

Don’t forget about tracing, it’s your best friend. It can show information when an exception is thrown. Here’s a good link on it: tracing