Record.IsDirty in Business Central 29: a worked example

 

Business Central 29 adds IsDirty to the Record API. It lets your AL code ask a record whether anything has changed since it was loaded, so you can skip writes that aren't needed and stop tracking change state by hand. In this post I'll show how it behaves on a Customer Card, and where it fits in real code.

What IsDirty does

Record.IsDirty() tells you whether a record instance has changed since it was loaded. It returns true when the in-memory values differ from what came back from the database, and false when they still match.

procedure IsDirty(): Boolean

That gives you a clean way to decide whether a record needs validating, saving, or a prompt to the user, without keeping track of the state yourself.

If you've worked with RecordRef, this will look familiar. RecordRef.IsDirty() has been around since runtime 5.0. Version 29 brings the same capability to the Record data type, so you ask the question directly on the record you're already working with.

Seeing it on a Customer Card

The quickest way to see what IsDirty reports is a page action. Add this page extension to a sandbox, open any customer, and run the action.

pageextension 50100 "Customer Card IsDirty Demo" extends "Customer Card"

{

    actions

    {

        addlast(Processing)

        {

            action(IsDirtyDemo)

            {

                ApplicationArea = All;

                Caption = 'IsDirty Demo';

                ToolTip = 'Shows how Record.IsDirty reports changes on this customer.';

 

                trigger OnAction()

                var

                    Customer: Record Customer;

                    DirtyMsg: Label 'IsDirty after %1: %2', Comment = '%1 = step name, %2 = Yes or No';

                begin

                    Customer.Get(Rec."No.");

                    Message(DirtyMsg, 'Get', Customer.IsDirty());

 

                    Customer.Name := 'IsDirty test';

                    Message(DirtyMsg, 'changing Name in memory', Customer.IsDirty());

                end;

            }

        }

    }

}

Set runtime to 18.0 or later in app.json before you build it.

The first message shows No. The record has just been loaded and nothing has changed.

The second message shows Yes. The Name in memory no longer matches what's stored in the database.

Version and availability

IsDirty ships with Business Central 2026 release wave 2, version 29.

The runtime floor is 18.0. Compiling against runtime 17.0 produces diagnostic AL0666, stating that IsDirty is not available in that runtime version and that 18.0 or greater is required. Set runtime to 18.0 in app.json before you use it.