bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/events/do-not-publish-events-inside-loops.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde faeacb2484 Add 12 general AL event-design articles to events domain
Add 12 atomic knowledge articles under microsoft/knowledge/events covering
general AL event-design best practices: IsHandled initialization and OnAfter
preservation, appending new event parameters, position-based event naming,
reusing/extending events, avoiding per-iteration publishing, Temp-prefixing
temporary record parameters, unabbreviated parameter names, preferring the
this keyword over IncludeSender, avoiding loosely typed parameters, not
mutating existing event contracts, and not bypassing critical operations
with IsHandled. Each article ships a .good.al and .bad.al demonstration
sample (object IDs 50240-50296; not compiled by CI). Extend the
al-events-review leaf Worklist with one targeted check per new rule.

Additive only; no contract or wiring change (events leaf already wired).

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-06-25 11:58:59 +02:00

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Markdown

---
bc-version: [all]
domain: events
keywords: [performance, loops, event-publishing, batch, onbefore, onafter, subscriber-cost]
technologies: [al]
countries: [w1]
application-area: [all]
---
# Do not publish events inside loops
## Description
Raising an event on every iteration of a loop multiplies the cost of every subscriber by the number of records. A subscriber doing even a little work per call can turn a fast batch into a timeout when the loop runs over thousands of rows, and the publisher has no control over how expensive a subscriber is. Unless a genuine per-row hook is required, publish once before the loop and once after it, passing enough context — filters, a key, or a buffer — for subscribers to act on the whole set at once. Generated code tends to drop an event inside the `repeat … until` without weighing the per-iteration multiplier.
## Best Practice
Raise `OnBeforeProcessLines` before the loop and `OnAfterProcessLines` after it, outside the `repeat … until`, so each subscriber runs once per batch rather than once per row. Give those events the record or filters they need to operate on the whole set.
See sample: `do-not-publish-events-inside-loops.good.al`.
## Anti Pattern
An event raised inside the loop body, fired once per iteration, so subscriber cost scales with the row count and large batches slow down or time out. Detection: an `OnBefore…`/`OnAfter…`/`On…` raise located between `repeat` and `until` in a record loop.
See sample: `do-not-publish-events-inside-loops.bad.al`.