Power Platform

Quick Tip: Getting a Dataverse Record from Your Browser Using the Web API

Alex Weaver

— 2 min read

While working on Power Platform, I started to notice how much time I was spending just trying to find record details when testing. The default views don’t always show the info I need, and digging around the UI gets old fast. To make things worse, my production machine is locked down — no Postman or any similar tools allowed.

So I went hunting for a faster way to get at that data. The solution turned out to be simple: just use the browser. There are two simple ways to grab records from Dataverse directly in the browser: if you already know the record ID, or if you want to search using filters.

Getting a single record by ID

If you already know the GUID of the record you want, this is by far the quickest way to get it.

Pattern: 
https://<environment>.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/<tablename>(<GUID>)
Example: 
https://orgname.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/accounts(00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000)

If you’re already logged into the environment, the browser will return the record as raw JSON. If you’re not authenticated, you’ll just get a 401 error.

You can also pick specific columns by using $select:

https://orgname.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/accounts(00000000-0000-0000-0000)?$select=name,accountnumber

That’s it. Fast, simple, and really handy when you know exactly what you’re looking for.

Searching for records with filters

If you don’t have the GUID, or you just want to find records that match certain criteria, you can use filters.

Pattern: 
https://<environment>.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/<tablename>?$filter=<field> eq '<value>'
Example: 
https://orgname.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/accounts?$filter=name eq 'Contoso Ltd'

This returns all records on the accounts table where the name equals Contoso Ltd

You can combine multiple filters with and or or:

?$filter=name eq 'Contoso Ltd' and accountnumber eq '12345'

And you can combine filters with $select to only return the fields you care about:

?$filter=name eq 'Contoso Ltd'&$select=name,accountnumber

The option is there to also limit the number of results using top

?$filter=contains(name,'Contoso')&$select=name,accountnumber&$top=5

And to order the results use orderby

?$filter=contains(name,'Contoso')&$orderby=name asc

A few tips for filters

  • Field names are logical names, not display names.
  • Filters are case sensitive.
  • Common operators include:eq (equals)ne (not equals)gt (greater than)lt (less than)ge / le (greater/less or equal)
  • For partial matches, use contains:
    • $filter=contains(name,'Contoso')
  • Wrap string values in single quotes if they contain spaces.

Now you’ve got two fast ways to inspect records without tools like Postman — open your browser and go.

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