How to fetch more than 5000 entities from CRM

Let's start with simple example to get all entities from CRM

public EntityCollection GetEntities(string entityName)

{

    var config = ServerConnection.GetServerConfiguration();

    var proxy = ServerConnection.GetOrganizationProxy(config);

    string request = string.Format(@"<fetch mapping ='logical'>

               <entity name = '{0}'></entity></fetch>", entityName);

    FetchExpression expression = new FetchExpression(request);

    var mult = proxy.RetrieveMultiple(expression);

    return mult;           

}

This will work, but will return maximum of 5000 elements in mult.Entities.

Let's add paging now and put that in loop until mult.MoreRecords is false.

string request = string.Format(@"<fetch
                count='5000' page='{1}' mapping ='logical'>
                <entity name = '{0}'></entity></fetch>", entityName, page++);

But now Paging cookie is required when trying to retrieve a set of records on any high pages.

Paging cookie is returned in EntityCollection.PagingCookie property. Also, XML tags must be encoded, because this is xml-in-xml.

pagingCookie = string.Format("paging-cookie='{0}'",
    System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(mult.PagingCookie));

Now, complete method looks like this:

public IList<Entity> GetEntitiesNoLimit(string entityName)

{

    var config = ServerConnection.GetServerConfiguration();

    IOrganizationService proxy = ServerConnection.GetOrganizationProxy(config);

    var entities = new List<Entity>();

    int page = 1;

    string pagingCookie = string.Empty;

    while (true)

    {

        string request = string.Format(@"<fetch {2} count='5000' page='{1}'

                         mapping ='logical'><entity name = '{0}'></entity></fetch>",

                         entityName, page++, pagingCookie);

        FetchExpression expression = new FetchExpression(request);

        var mult = proxy.RetrieveMultiple(expression);

        entities.AddRange(mult.Entities);

        if (mult.MoreRecords)

        {

            pagingCookie = string.Format("paging-cookie='{0}'",

                        System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(mult.PagingCookie));

        }

        else

        {

            break;

        }

    }

    return entities;

}