Unveiling the Mysteries: Dataverse API

Intro:
Dataverse is a versatile data service that supports both low-code and no-code solutions, making it ideal for storing structured and unstructured data within a role-based security framework. It’s designed to be user-friendly and robust for small workloads, yet scalable and performant enough to handle large enterprise demands. In this week’s Bite-Sized Wizardry Series, we’ll dive into the magic of leveraging the Dataverse Web API. Since the Dataverse API is web-based, all requests are made via HTTP, which essentially means each API request resembles a URL, much like what you see in your browser.

When you call the Dataverse API, you don’t need to provide your username and password for each request. Instead, you authenticate with the API once, receive an Access Token, and then use this Access Token for all subsequent requests.

Accessing a specific table in Dataverse via the API involves concatenating your environment URL, the API version, and the entity (table) name. This URL structure allows you to make API calls to interact with the specified table in your Dataverse environment. Let me know if you need any more details or have other questions!

Here’s the formula:

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/<<tablename>>

• Count If the intention is to find the size for a table, the parameter to pass would be $count

The below example I am querying the size of principalobjectaccess table

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/principalobjectaccessset/$count

• Top if i need retrieve the top 2 records from the msdyn_dataflows table

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/msdyn_dataflows?$top=2

• Filter To filter records by a specific field in Dataverse, you should use the $filter parameter.

Below is an example where I am trying to filter all the dataflows created with a specific solutionid

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/msdyn_dataflows?$filter=solutionid eq 'fd140aae-4df4-11dd-bd17-0019b9312238'

• Select

If we enhance filtering to selecting specific fields, you can use the $select parameter. This parameter allows you to specify which fields you want to retrieve in the response.

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/msdyn_dataflows?$filter=solutionid%20eq%20%27fd140aae-4df4-11dd-bd17-0019b9312238%27&$select=msdyn_dataflowid,createdon,solutionid

• Select a specific record if I want to retrieve a specific canvas app with the ID 0858c77d-7f81-4d49-961a-7e6641dbe7d6 from the canvasapps entity table

<<https:environmenturl>>/api/data/v9.2/canvasapps(0858c77d-7f81-4d49-961a-7e6641dbe7d6)

Further Read

1) Dataverse WebAPI

2) Working with dataverse tables in power automate