Connecting to CRM Online 2011 Web Services using SOAP Requests Only
Updated 29th August 2012: The sample has been modified to support both the Microsoft online services environment (Office 365 style) authentication and the Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) authentication. Once again many thanks to Ryan Lo from Marketo for providing the updated sample.
Recently I have had a number of developers asking me about using CRM Online web services from within non.NET applications such as PHP or Flash web apps. Given my heads down approach on .NET these days I ended up putting together a pretty basic sample in C# that shows how to access CRM Online web services using SOAP messages only. This code sample retrieves data from CRM Online using pure SOAP calls only and no additional assemblies to illustrate the underlying SOAP interactions. Couple of ISV partners were able to successfully use this sample and port it over to PHP & Adobe ActionScript, so this stuff apparently works!
The soap messages were based on Fiddler (https://www.fiddler2.com) traffic capture of sample code from the CRM 2011 SDK (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx).
You can download the sample code here:
https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CRM-Online-2011-WebServices-14913a16
At a high-level below is what the code does:
- Pass in the device credentials and get a PUID. The device credentials is a randomly generated string that satisfies Live ID schema. You can generate one from this tool: Create CRM 2011 Beta Device
- POST https://login.live.com/ppsecure/DeviceAddCredential.srf
- Get the PUID from response
- Pass the device credentials
- POST https://login.live.com/\*\*\*\*STS.srf (dynamically obtained)
- Get the device CiperData (BinaryDAToken)
- Pass the WLID username, password and device BinaryDAToken
- POST https://login.live.com/***STS.srf (dynamically obtained)
- Get the security tokens (2 CipherValues) & X509SubjectKeyIdentifier
- Do CRUD with the web service by passing X509SubjectKeyIdentifier, 2 CipherValues and the SOAP request (with data payload)
- POST https://yourorganization.api.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc
- Get the result from the CRUD response and parse XML to get the data you need
BTW the new MSDN code gallery (beta) is pretty awesome with the ability to browse through the source code without downloading and extracting the zip file.
Pretty nice, huh!
Comments
Anonymous
February 10, 2011
First of all, thank you very much for your example. It is solving exactly the issue I need to archive. However I'm not able to pass through 4th step. While calling request.GetResponse(), I always get 'The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.' I'm pretty sure my credentials and CRMUrl are correctly set. Do you have any ideas what I could have missed? Thanks a lot for any suggestions, LukasAnonymous
February 14, 2011
Hello, I keep getting "An error occurred when verifying security for the message." I get it with the code from your zip and my test. I tried to verify the messages using fiddler and it seems ok. Any idea what I could try?Anonymous
March 03, 2011
@lukas Have your set the correct account ID from CRM Online? Many have had similar issues where they didn't specify the correct account ID causing the code to fail. @Ganwell That's a strange message. Is there a proxy or something that you need in your environment? Also if you have https bypass on fiddler and leave it running, it might give you errors as well. Close fiddler and see if it helps.Anonymous
March 17, 2011
@Ganwell did you find a solution for your problem? I have the same error message...Anonymous
March 22, 2011
The sample has been modified to support CRM Online accounts in Europe & Asia. For more details regarding the fix, please see: blogs.msdn.com/.../crm-online-2011-web-services-soap-sample-now-ready-for-emea-amp-asia.aspx Can you please run the udpated sample and see if you're still getting errors? Thanks, -Girish.Anonymous
March 24, 2011
Hi Girish, Thank you. You mentioned in your post that "Couple of ISV partners were able to successfully use this sample and port it over to PHP..." Can you point me in the right direction of an example to see how this was implemented in PHP?Anonymous
March 24, 2011
Steve - we have a working example with PHP. You can try it out here... dynamics.21logs.com/webclient email me at sraja ==at== 21logs dottt com, i will send u the source...Anonymous
March 25, 2011
HI Girish , Sweet....Great example very helpful .great work , works great with apache HttpClient as well...coolAnonymous
May 19, 2011
Thanks for such a nice Post. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from it. I will wait for content from your Side. Thanks for sharing such valuable Views. http://imraan.comAnonymous
June 12, 2011
James Colud please share the code... @Ganwell did you find a solution for your problem? I have the same error message...Anonymous
July 25, 2011
Hi, thanks for providing this code. I'm looking to integrate our Dynamics 2011 IFD with our company website, which is built in PHP. We want to be able to give clients the ability to view and update their contact records and upload and download files after logging in. I'm aware of the various Customer Portal plugins that exist but as they are built in aspx and our site is in php, I was to explore various other options before going down that path. Do you think the procedure you've outlined in this post is secure enough to transfer client details from CRM to our site? We will be displaying confidential financial information, so this is a real concern for us. Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give me.Anonymous
July 31, 2011
@Melanie Yes, you should be able to use a similar procedure to securely integrate your PHP website with CRM 2011 IFD setup. As I have done here, you should create a basic .NET sample and capture the network traffic using IE9 or Fiddler. You can then play it back using code on your PHP site.Anonymous
September 02, 2011
I am in a similar situation to @Melanie. I'm working on a PHP site for a customer that wants to drive its customer data via CRM 2011 On Premise setup for IFD. The biggest question I need answered at this point is, is it possible to use the OData Service from PHP with IFD? Prior to switching to IFD, the CRM was setup for simple AD/NTLM authentication. We had the site almost complete working using the OData Service. The CRM was switch over to IFD in order to meet other requirements. Since then, I've been trying to figure out how to make the OData Service code work, but have been unable to make it happen. Can you shed any light on this for me?Anonymous
September 05, 2011
@Adam The OData endpoint at the moment doesn't have any external authentication mechanism. If you're using IFD and calling from an external app (PHP in this case), you'd have to use the regular WCF endpoint instead.Anonymous
September 06, 2011
Thanks for that. I was kinda thinking that I wouldn't be able to use OData in the IFD environment. Can you give me any guidance about the URLs to use to authenticate to the On Premise IFD environment? The code you've given is for the Online version, is there a similar mechanism available in On Premise?Anonymous
October 11, 2011
I can finally get the result from the CRUD response and parse XML to get the data, accountid and account name. But based on the account info, how can I update the other info of the accounts?Anonymous
October 11, 2011
@Cheng, You'd have to compose the appropriate XML fragment to update the account. Some examples of the update XML are available in the CRM Online SDK.Anonymous
October 11, 2011
Can you please point me which part of CRM Online SDK has that sample code?Anonymous
March 15, 2012
Here we are March 2012 and this is still relevant! Thanks for the post it's solved a big headache .Anonymous
April 12, 2012
How to implement this for Online Federated Authentication? New Online Federated CRM version.Anonymous
May 21, 2012
I'm getting 'The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.' on my new development too. @Lucas have you resolved your issue on this 500 error code yet? Can you share your resolution? @Girish posted "Have your set the correct account ID from CRM Online?" on this issue. What do you mean? Where do I do it in CRM Online? Sorry, but I'm new to this CRM online right now. Many thanks!Anonymous
June 25, 2012
Girish - this is a great solution, thanks a lot or it. It was working perfectly for us till a week ago, but now i get 500 internal server error on step 4 everytime. Anyone experiencing the same problem?Anonymous
June 26, 2012
Peter / Swapan, Recently some of the Windows Live ID login URLs & URNs changed from previous values. That caused the code to fail with 500 internal server error. The sample has now been updated to dynamically pull the Windows Live URLs & URNs from the values obtained from discovery service. If you use the updated sample, your issue should be resolved. Hope that helps. Thanks, -Girish.Anonymous
June 26, 2012
@GuruPrasad, Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to rebuild this sample for federated identity yet. But you should be able to capture the network traffic in fiddler using the same approach I mention above to build a sample for federated authentication.Anonymous
July 25, 2012
Does not work. error 500 when sends headers to CRM Online. (North Europe)Anonymous
July 26, 2012
Alex, Does your CRMOnline instance use Windows Live ID (hotmail) for authentication? If it uses a different authentication method (Office365 ID or Microsoft Online Services Portal) then this sample won't work.Anonymous
August 27, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 29, 2012
@Lourdhu The code sample has been updated to reflect the new OCP (office 365 style) authentication. I’ll shortly blog about the details of the updated sample but if you re-download the sample, you should be good to go.Anonymous
September 23, 2012
Had been able to integrate using LiveId. Facing problem using office 365.... however authentication was successful using the attached code but CRM communication resulted in : An error occurred when verifying security for the message. Anyone able to integrate this in Java/Open source?Anonymous
October 04, 2012
Can anyone help me to connect php with crm 2011 office 365 authentication.. please help me.. you can contact with me via noozaan@hotmail.comAnonymous
March 27, 2013
Super Girish.. can u please tell me how to get all contacts in single file without mentioning contact id(i.e., i want all contacts in particular user) . it's urgent............Anonymous
April 09, 2013
Thanks for a great post. It will be very helpful for learning. This view would be very useful. Thanks for sharing this great article.Anonymous
April 29, 2013
Any chance of someone as talented as yourself working through the reverse engineering for an ADFS/IFD On-Premise environment instead of just online? :) Getting a token from ADFS is not bad, but the XML for an Organization.svc request is a lot more hairy and I need the support of some crypto folks to understand how to reverse engineer it. See social.microsoft.com/.../c485d98b-6e0b-49e7-ab34-8ecf8d694d31 for an example of a 'successful' on-premise IFD request - it has a whole different layout with other things that need to be generated and its not clear to me (at all) how to get there.Anonymous
May 14, 2013
After learning more than i wanted about crypto, I solved the on-premise case. Thanks again for this great starting point.Anonymous
May 14, 2013
@Ken, That is great to hear. If you have any code samples and/or pointers to share with the rest of the community, I'm sure that would be very welcome!Anonymous
June 25, 2013
Hi Girish, You work for us is really awesome, appreciate it. I had an issue connecting to CRM 2011 using java. The CRM system doesnt use live id for authentication.It uses the active directory. I am clue less how to goahead.I am new to CRM. Can you please suggest me a way. Thanks, SagarAnonymous
August 13, 2013
Is there any way to support OATH Authetication on Microsoft Dynamic. Using your above code, we are able to authenticate and able to get List of Accounts. Thanks for Gr8 and Simplified post.Anonymous
October 24, 2013
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 24, 2013
Rodrigo, This has not been updated for CRM 2013. You're better off using the OData endpoint of CRM instead of this workaround for accessing CRM Online web services with the 2013 release.Anonymous
December 18, 2013
Hi Girish, Any plans to update this for CRM 2013 online?Anonymous
January 07, 2014
Dear ppl, Anybody have connected to CRM 2011 on premises using Active Direrctory from JAVA. If so how did you achieve.. i am very much clueless.. any help will be appreciated. ThanksAnonymous
June 03, 2015
Shaffic, Any progress on porting the solution to Java? Thanks, AnaAnonymous
November 03, 2015
Guys any update on connection to crm using JAVA??