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If we want to build a custom UI with CDS as backend and implement excel import/export functionality (as in model-driven app), does the CDS sdk/api have support for the same?
The API supports data import - see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/common-data-service/data-import-entities as a starting point. However, there's no equivalent for the export functionality
Thanks @DavidJennaway for your response ! I was looking more in terms of how its from the Model-Driven UI , for example given the View name the api/sdk method should be able to export the records to excel file and upon updating the excel importing back , the api/SDK method should write it back to the entity.
There is no documented functionality available in the API to export records to Excel. It might be possible to find out what calls are made in the model-driven UI to export to Excel, and to replicate these, but as they are not documented, this approach would be unsupported.
The import functions in the API (as per my previous post), should work for importing from Excel, but the problem you have is that you'll need to have generated the Excel file in exactly the format that CDS expects
something like this may work https://dreamingincrm.com/2016/11/10/export-to-excel-using-dynamics-365-sdk/, and you could also look at how Natraj does it in his XrmToolBox tool https://github.com/rajyraman/mscrmexporttoexcel
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