Forslag: code-must-not-change-workdate

custom/knowledge/architecture/code-must-not-change-workdate.md

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+---
+bc-version: [all]
+domain: architecture
+keywords: [workdate, session-setting, user-control, side-effect]
+technologies: [al]
+countries: [w1]
+application-area: [all]
+---
+
+# Application code must not change the WorkDate
+
+## Description
+
+The work date is a per-user session setting the user controls from the
+client (the date shown in the top-right corner, used to default posting
+dates and date filters). Microsoft's own Business Central standard is that
+application code must never call the `WorkDate` function to set a new
+value. Doing so changes what the user sees and defaults to for the rest of
+their session, as a side effect of running unrelated business logic — a
+surprising, hard-to-trace behavior change the user never asked for and has
+no visibility into.
+
+This is a call-direction distinction: reading the current work date via
+`WorkDate` (or `WorkDate()` with no argument) is fine and common — it is
+only the assignment form, `WorkDate(NewDate)`, that is the anti-pattern.
+
+## Best Practice
+
+```al
+PostingDate := WorkDate();
+```
+
+Read the work date to default a value; never write to it.
+
+## Anti Pattern
+
+```al
+WorkDate(CalcDate('<1D>', WorkDate()));
+```
+
+Setting the work date from within a codeunit, report, or page action
+changes session state the user owns, for the duration of a call that has
+nothing to do with the user's date preference. If a scenario genuinely
+needs a specific date for a calculation, pass or compute that date as a
+local variable — never repurpose the session's `WorkDate`.