CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

hey micah:

here are the approx steps:

1. Create a drupal form to collect email address. Add email validator to form element

2. On submit, check if email exists using contact_search API. if so, you have the contact ID, so construct below url.

You can use:

CRM_Utils_System::url - to construct the url
CRM_Contact_BAO_Contact_Utils::generateChecksum - to generate the checksum

You can use drupal mail api to send out the mail or

CRM_Utils_Mail::send

ping us on IRC if u need more details etc

lobo

Thank you! This is very helpful, and I'm well on my way into implementing it. I'm trying to figure out how to use the contact_search API now. The normal API v3 doesn't seem to let me search for a contact by email address:

$results=civicrm_api("Contact","get", array ('version' =>'3'));

The only documentation I can find about the contact API in the wiki is here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC33/Contact+APIs

But it says this is outdated and there is no such page for CiviCRM 4. And additionally it says that the civicrm_contact_search function is deprecated. Do you have some example code for how to search for a contact that works with CiviCRM 4?

Thank you so much everyone! I have successfully gotten it working.

Sure! Here's the code. I changed some of the function names, text, and email addresses to protect the innocent . The module name in this code is "civicrm_custom". Also note that no matter what email address gets entered into the form the same message gets displayed. This is to prevent someone with a list of email addresses from learning which of those people donated to our organization. Also note that if the emailing sending fails, it doesn't doesn't display an error message. We don't want people to be able to learn who our donors are even if our email setup is broken. Instead, it uses the php mail() function to let us know that our email setup is down (which, in our case, is a remote SMTP server).

You might need to change the line that sets $query to use your own profile id. Right now it says gid=9, which is a custom profile on my site. Also note at the bottom it creates a new activity with activity_type_id 45. This is a new activity type I made for updating stored data.


<?php
// make a "/account" page
function civicrm_custom_menu() {
    $items['account'] = array(
        'page callback' => 'civicrm_custom_account_page',
        'access callback' => true
    );  
    return $items;
}

// the page renders the form
function civicrm_custom_account_page() {
    return drupal_get_form('civicrm_custom_form');
}

// form to change account information
function civicrm_custom_form($form_state) {
    $form = array(
        'h1' => array( '#markup' => "<h1>Update Contact Information and Preferences</h1>"),
        'p' => array( '#markup' => "<p>Fill out the form below to update your contact information and mailing list settings. You will receive an email with a link to that you can follow to change your data.</p>"),
        'email' => array(
            '#type' => 'textfield',
            '#title' => t('Email Address'),
            '#size' => 30, 
            '#maxlength' => 128,
            '#description' => t('Enter the email address that you gave us')
        ),
        'submit' => array(
            '#type' => 'submit',
            '#value' => t('Send me an link to update my information')
        )
    );
    return $form;
}

function civicrm_custom_form_validate($form, &$form_state) {
    if($form_state['values']['email'] == '') {
        form_set_error('', t('You must enter an email address.'));
    } else if(filter_var($form_state['values']['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) == false) {
        form_set_error('', t('You must enter a valid email address.'));
    }

}

function civicrm_custom_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
    $email = $form_state['values']['email'];

    // everyone gets this message
    drupal_set_message(t('If your email address is in our database, you will receive an email shortly with a link to update your contact information and preferences. If you do not receive an email and you are sure you have entered the correct email address, please contact us.'));

    // initialize civicrm stuff
    civicrm_initialize(true);
    require_once(drupal_get_path('module', 'civicrm').'/../CRM/Contact/BAO/Contact/Utils.php');
    require_once(drupal_get_path('module', 'civicrm').'/../CRM/Utils/Mail.php');

    // try looking up the contact
    $result = civicrm_api('Contact', 'get', array('email' => $email, 'version' => 3));
    foreach($result['values'] as $contact) {
        // generate a url for this contact
        $checksum = CRM_Contact_BAO_Contact_Utils::generateChecksum($contact['contact_id'], time(), 24); // 24 hour checksum
        $query = "reset=1&gid=9&id=".$contact['contact_id']."&".$checksum;
        $url = CRM_Utils_System::url('civicrm/profile/edit', $query, true, null, false);

        // email the contact
        $email = array(
            'from' => 'My Organization <info@example.org>',
            'toName' => $contact['display_name'],
            'toEmail' => $contact['email'],
            'subject' => 'Update your contact information and preferences',
            'text' => "Someone, hopefully you, has requested to update the contact information and preferences that we have on file. If you have not done this, please ignore this email.\n\nUpdate your information here:\n".$url."\n\nThis URL will expire after 24 hours.\n"
        );
        if(!CRM_Utils_Mail::send($email)) {
            // on fail, email webmaster@example.org
            mail('webmaster@example.org', 'CiviCRM failed sending an update email to '.$contact['email'], 'Hey, go make sure emails are getting sent!');
        }

        // add an activity saying they updated their info
        $result = civicrm_api('Activity', 'create', array('version' => 3, 'activity_type_id' => 45, 'target_contact_id' => $contact['contact_id'], 'subject' => 'Update stored data email sent'));
    }
}


Yes. The only people at our organization who have passwords to our website is staff, but we have tens of thousands of contacts in our database.

would this be an option for users with no Drupal account to get a link to get back to 'my dashboard' and/or send out 'membership tokens' so people can self-verify their membership?
also does it offer any options for letting people 'cancel' their own civi events?

just thinking through some of the things that frustrate contacts who don't have accounts.

wow Michah's code looks extremely useful... is this approach still considered "good practice" or is there a better way?