Local Connection Configuration - References - Local Connection Configuration - User documentation for storage of Local PLC connection information in an AX workspace. - Local Connection Configuration,

When engineering a non-trivial automation solution in AX Code Desktop IDE, the user will be required to execute multiple commands against a PLC. While apax scripting provides a method of automating common workflows, ad-hoc command invocation through the GUI requires information such as IP address and device certificate to be provided for every command that communicates with a PLC. To optimize this workflow, a user may persist one or more pieces of connection information in their project structure and simply reference this information via unique identifier. These files are known as "Local Connection Configuration" files.

The AX Code Desktop IDE will look inside of the .ax/plcs folder of the current workspace for local connection configuration files, as shown by this example filesystem file/folder structure:

<workspace>
|── .apax
|── .ax
|   |── plcs
|       |── Plc_1.yaml
|       |── Plc_2.yaml
|   |── certificates
|       |── PLC-Communication-1.pem
|       |── PLC-Communication-2.pem
|── .git
|── bin
|── obj
|── src
|── test
|── apax.yml

PLC connection information is identified by its filename (e.g. Plc_1.yaml). A file extension is not required for these files, but including a proper YAML extension will allow AX Code IDE to provide helpful features such as syntax highlighting when editing the file. The contents of this file should be valid YAML with a root mapping consisting of the following fields:

Fields not marked as "required" are optional and may be omitted. The AX Code Desktop IDE may prompt for this information if required for issuing a command to a PLC. If a specific field is not needed for a connection, set its value to null (i.e. certificate: ~ ) to indicate that no value is needed for this field.