Context in plugin in mscrm 2011

What is context in plug-in?

All plug-ins must implement the IPlugin(base class for plug-in) interface.

 The IPlugin interface defines an Execute method, which takes an IPluginExecutionContext parameter.

 This context is contained in the System.IServiceProvider parameter.

 When a system event is fired for which a plug-in is registered, the system creates and populates the context. The system then calls the plug-in's Execute method, passing in the context as a parameter.

The context contains information that describes the run-time environment that the plug-in is executing in, information related to the execution pipeline, and entity business information.

Code used in the plug-in:

//plugin class should inherit the plugin base class i.e IPlugin

public class Plugin: IPlugin

// Obtain the execution context from the service provider.

public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)

{

IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)

serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));

// Obtain the organization service reference.

IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory = (IOrganizationServiceFactory)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IOrganizationServiceFactory));

IOrganizationService service = serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(context.UserId);

// The InputParameters collection contains all the data passed in the message request.

if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") &&

    context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)

{

// Obtain the target entity from the input parameters.

    Entity entity = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];

// Target could be of Type ‘Entity’ or ‘Entity Reference’.  For example, DeleteRequest does have a Target property but its type is EntityReference.

// The InputParameters collection contains all the data passed in the message request.

if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") &&

    context.InputParameters["Target"] is EntityReference)

{

// Obtain the target entity from the input parameters.

    EntityReference entity = (EntityReference)context.InputParameters["Target"];