How to patch images from Dataverse to D365 F&SC

Introduction

Patching images or, in other words, uploading images from a canvas app is a very common use case. Whether the data source is Dataverse or SharePoint, it is a functionality of many canvas apps. For the past 1 year or so, I have created several apps that connect to D365 F&SCM (formerly known as AX or F&O). One of the best ways to connect a canvas app to D365 is by using virtual entities. To learn more about virtual entities, click here.

Patching images from a Dataverse table

The setup is pretty simple:

1. there is a record which has a bunch of related records of a table that has a column of type image.
2. these records with images are the ones we will patch to D365

Here is a demo of the functionality, I will share the code after that:

The code to fetch the Dataverse image records and then to attach them to the Attachments table in D365 is as follows:

ForAll(
    colImages As ThisImage,
    Patch(
        'Sales order header document attachments V2 (mserp)',
        Defaults('Sales order header document attachments V2 (mserp)'),
        {
            'Sales order': locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
            'Sales order headers V3': locSelectedSalesOrder,
            'File name': "Delivery receipt" & "_" & locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
            'File type': "png",
            Type: "Delivery Receipt",
            Description: "Delivery receipt" & "_" & locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
            'Archive file': With(
                {
                    varTempFile: JSON(
                        ThisImage.Value,
                        JSONFormat.IncludeBinaryData
                    )
                },
                Mid(
                    varTempFile,
                    Find(
                        ",",
                        varTempFile
                    ) + 1,
                    Len(varTempFile) - Find(
                        ",",
                        varTempFile
                    ) - 1
                )
            )
        }
    )
);
Patch(
    'Sales order header document attachments V2 (mserp)',
    Defaults('Sales order header document attachments V2 (mserp)'),
    {
        'Sales order': locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
        'Sales order headers V3': locSelectedSalesOrder,
        'File name': "Customer signature" & "_" & locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
        'File type': "png",
        Type: "Delivery Receipt",
        Description: "Customer signature" & "_" & locSelectedSalesOrder.mserp_salesordernumber,
        'Archive file': With(
            {
                varTempFile: JSON(
                    penSignature.Image,
                    JSONFormat.IncludeBinaryData
                )
            },
            Mid(
                varTempFile,
                Find(
                    ",",
                    varTempFile
                ) + 1,
                Len(varTempFile) - Find(
                    ",",
                    varTempFile
                ) - 1
            )
        )
    }
);

The key is the 'Archive file' value which is the base64 version of the image.

Patched images in D365 F&SC

This is how the images show up in D365: