Setting Up Pac Power-FX Language in VSCode Terminal

Language Troubleshooting for "Pac Power-fx" in VSCode Terminal

Diana Birkelbach gives a brief insight into her experience with setting up the language for “pac power-fx” in the VSCode Terminal. After encountering Daniel Laskewitz’s article about the “Power Platform CLI: September Release”, Diana was particularly intrigued with "pac power-fx". She foresees the frequent use of this feature in the future, and appreciates its integration in her everyday tools from within Visual Studio Code (VSCode).

Despite encountering an issue where "pac power-fx" was not working within her standalone "pac cli", that problem was resolved a few days later with the availability of the power-fx command in the VSCode Extension. This allowed interaction with "Dataverse" by inputting the commands "pac power-fx repl" and "Accounts".

However, trying to find specific records presented a challenge; Diana experienced parsing errors when attempting to use Filter or Find functions. Initially believing this to be a bug, Diana patiently waited for a solution.

Eventually, she realized that she was encountering an issue with the PowerFx language, as the system considered her "Power Fx language" as German. The solution she found involved manually setting the language to English. In her words, she "can never get used to ';' instead of ',' to separate the function parameters", hence the need for a language fix.

To resolve the issue in Canvas Apps and Power Platform CLI, Diana had to change the text to English. She further mentioned that changing the user language in Power Apps alone wasn't sufficient; the browser's language also needed adjustment.

Despite having her environment, browser, Windows, "pac cli", and VSCode all in English, Diana discovered that the VSCode Terminal was still operating in German. The solution involves setting the terminal's output to English by typing “set-culture -cultureinfo en-US” in the terminal, restarting VSCode, and typing "get-culture" to confirm the change.

Finally, Diana reveals her love for using logicalName for columns in "pac power-fx", stating that it's "how we deal with webAPI, form-scripting, etc. so it’s a natural process for a pro-dev". You can find more about her experiences through this link relevant to providing additional insights.

A Brief Overview of the Power Platform CLI

"Pac power-fx", a part of the Power Platform CLI, is an excellent tool for developers, as it aids in smoother coding operations. With its recent update on the VSCode Extension, one can now interact more fluently with the Dataverse. Besides fixing the language-settings complication, it also allows more natural processes for pro-developers, like the use of logicalName for columns.