What's New: AL Language (2025 release wave 1)

Overview

This 15-minute video from the Business Central channel, published 2025-04-01, walks through the AL language updates in 2025 release wave 1. It covers moving fields and tables between apps with move to and move from properties, resources in apps, page and report changes, and language additions such as the continue keyword and multi-line strings.

It also covers JSON and text improvements, YAML read and write, role explorer inheritance of about title and about text, and testing features. The testing features include an HTTP client handler and a server certificate validation override, both for tests and not for production.

Key points

• Move to and move from properties can now be used on tables and fields to move them between applications.
• Resources in apps are open to everyone, with a resource root folder set in app.json. Limits: 16 MB per resource, 250 MB for all resources, 250 characters per resource name, 256 resources per app.
• Get resource as text needs the encoding specified for correct output; the default is MS DOS. A list resources function supports simple pattern matching.
• The user control host page type holds one user control and nothing else, for example a PowerBI report or a browser. Only one user control is allowed, it cannot have actions, and some limitations are still being worked on.
• Reports gain tooltips, a property for multiple Excel data sheets that layouts can override, obsolete report layouts, pre-rendering and post report triggers, and access to the target format. View from stream previews a report without downloading it.
• New language features: the continue keyword, multi-line strings prefixed with @, a call stack function that does not throw an exception, negative numbers in increment string, and to text on simple types.
• JSON objects get direct text and type-specific get methods. The text method does not check whether the property exists and can throw, but a default value can be given. YAML read and write is backported to runtime version 143.

Features

A status with a roadmap link comes from the Microsoft 365 roadmap feature this part of the video covers (matched by Haiku; links Opus dropped are not used); other statuses need a status word in the video itself.

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• other “app.json” at 0:46
• other “JsonToken” at 10:01
• other “JsonValue” at 10:01
• other “HTP client” at 14:04

Quotes

• 0:26 “in this release we have opened up for the use of the move to and move from properties on tables and Fields”
• 2:59 “the new limits for a single resource is 16 mbes the maximum size of all the resources in the entire app is 250 megabytes”
• 3:44 “we have added the ability to override the card page ID this can be especially helpful for the scenarios where there is no card”
• 4:45 “there are a few limitations that we are still working on but go ahead and try it out to see if it fits your”
• 8:08 “we added the call stack function that allows you to get the current callstack without throwing an exception”
• 8:19 “improved readability by introducing the keyword continue this is actually a bc ideas that has now been implemented”
• 11:24 “the read from and write to yaml functionality has been backported to runtime version 143 so if you haven’t started already then even the”
• 13:44 “we do not recommend you using this in production but for test purposes with connecting to local Services self- signed certificates and so on”

Disclaimers in the video

• 4:45 preview: there are a few limitations that we are still working on but go ahead and try it out to see if it fits your needs
• 13:44 other: we do not recommend you using this in production but for test purposes

Presenters (as heard): Stephen Belo.