Author Topic: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ? (Read 2059 times)

xavier · November 24, 2009, 08:20:05 am

Hi,

When saving a contact, I need to :
1) calculate a custom field and save it
2) add a relationship based on the value of this custom field

If I'm correct,
1) in civicrm_pre hook, I can create calculate the custom field and modify it, but I can't always create the relationship (because on create, the contact id isn't yet assigned

2) in civicrm_post hook, I can always create the relationship, but I don't understand how to save the custom field, because if I use the api, it will trigger again the civicrm_post hook, and I'll be looping between the api and the hook ?

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dragontree · November 29, 2009, 02:26:24 am

One way to get the contact id in the pre hook is to take it directly from the database. As the contact id field is autoincrement, the contact to be created will have the MAX(contact id)+1.

Not sure how this would behave if you have many users creating contact at the same time though. Probably not so well.

Not sure about the post hook...maybe add an if clause to check if the relationship is already created and if not, then create. Although this sounds too easy

xavier · November 30, 2009, 05:36:23 am

Hi,

The problem is that the id is unique for all users. Meaning that between you do the max() and the time you insert the relationship, you might have another user that creates a contact, and therefore "stealing" the max() you have used in the relationship to create a different contact.

I don't think you can lock, especially if it mean locking between the pre and the post hook.

I'll try to cook the right test on the post.

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Donald Lobo · November 30, 2009, 08:15:20 am

1. you can set a static variable to prevent the looping between multiple calls of the hook. We use this trick in some of the drupal integration modules

2. You should not use a max(id) to compute your contact id. Ideally u should be able to get this from the "form" object in most cases. Unfortunately, we have not been consistent with class variables and this is specific on a form-by-form basis.

lobo

xavier · November 30, 2009, 12:37:20 pm

THANKS!

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Author Topic: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ? (Read 2059 times)

xavier

When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ?

dragontree

Re: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ?

xavier

Re: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ?

Donald Lobo

Re: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ?

xavier

Re: When is the best time to add relationships when saving a contact ?