Dataverse: preserve list continuation value for GetItemsAsync pagination

[daviburg]

Summary

The generated Microsoft Dataverse client exposes GetNextPageAsync(string nextLinkValue), but the GetItemsAsync response model (ItemsList) exposes only value. It does not preserve the opaque continuation/next-link value required by GetNextPageAsync.

This prevents an SDK consumer from implementing the normal list-records paging flow using only the typed public API.

Current generated surface

public class ItemsList
{
    [JsonPropertyName("value")]
    public List<Item> Value { get; set; }
}

public Task<ItemsList> GetItemsAsync(...)
public Task<JsonElement> GetNextPageAsync(string nextLinkValue, ...)

GetItemsAsync supports $apply, $filter, $orderby, $top, and $expand; it has no continuation-token parameter. The generated model also does not contain an explicit next-link property or extension-data dictionary, so an opaque continuation returned by the connector is discarded during deserialization.

Reproduction

1. Call GetItemsAsync against a Dataverse table that returns more than one page.
2. Observe that the typed ItemsList result exposes its Value collection only.
3. There is no token/link available to pass into GetNextPageAsync.

Expected behavior

The generator should preserve the connector continuation value on ItemsList, preferably as a documented typed property when the contract defines one. If the contract uses an opaque or nonstandard property name, an extension-data dictionary is an acceptable fallback, provided the SDK documents how to obtain the value and pass it to GetNextPageAsync.

Acceptance criteria

• A consumer can obtain the continuation value from a GetItemsAsync result without manually issuing raw HTTP requests.
• A consumer can pass that value to GetNextPageAsync to retrieve the next page.
• Unit tests cover deserialization of a list response containing the continuation value and the list-to-next-page flow.
• Generated-code metadata or the generator mapping is corrected so future regeneration preserves the continuation value.

Notes

A DirectConnector sample endpoint can invoke GetNextPageAsync when a caller already has a next-link, but it cannot automatically chain from GetItemsAsync until the typed list response retains that value.

[daviburg]

Release-triage update from the pinned WI-9 managed-connector snapshot (AF086B677D0B4CF8666E4AA19644D9824D6C02CA, SHA-256 8c07cdc661241079cbd8f801bb28444f7f5907b68518c161be98bc6aa6c3e24c):

• GetItems, GetItems_V2, and ODataStyleGetItems_V2 all return #/definitions/ItemsList.
• ItemsList declares only the value array. It has no nextLink, @odata.nextLink, continuation-token property, or extension-data contract.
• GetNextPage is separately curated to return JsonElement, but Swagger provides no typed link from GetItems to that route.

Therefore current generation is faithful to the declared response schema; a full client refresh cannot recover a field absent from owner Swagger. Fixing this requires either correcting the managed connector Swagger to declare the actual continuation wire key or adding a documented connector-specific patch after confirming the live response shape. Keeping this issue open for that work, but it is not a generic generator/release regression and does not block the invariant-formatting/collision release sequence.