Question

Is it possible to use CRM 2011 View (savedquery) with linq? I mean can I do something like this:

IEnumerable<Opportunity> GetOpportunites(CrmOrganizationServiceContext context, string viewName, Guid customerId)
{
    var view = context.CreateQuery<SavedQuery>().FirstOrDefault(q => q.Name == viewName);
    if(view!=null)
       return from Opportunity op in view
           where op.CustomerId.Id == customerId
           select op;
           return new List<Opportunity>();
}

Answer 1

It certainly would not. As Servy suggested, try it out and you’d see why.

SavedQuery has two properties that define a view – FetchXml (the underlying query) and LayoutXml (the columns returned in the UI). In other words, it does not return the data that the view returns in the UI, but rather the definition of how the data is returned in the UI.

The most cut-and-dry way to enumerate through the records you’re expecting to have returned from a view is to use a FetchRequest directly. You’d have to insert your condition dynamically as an XML node in the FetchXml.

You can also parse the XML filter set, then translate appropriate to Linq, but this would obviously be more challenging, perhaps unnecessarily so.

A third approach is to create a static view in the system where as a condition you set the customer equal to some arbitrary customer, and then change the customer id dynamically in the XML string.