CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

hey there,

is there a page where using the api with custom data is documented?

i have a feeling there isn't and am volunteering to write it, if someone can give me the recommended way to do it these days.

how is it meant to interact with the getfields api call?

do you have to know the id of the field and use

if you have some examples of it is use or could point me to cool / simple ways of working with it, that would be cool

ta!
michael

thanks for that.  i guess that is all you need.  i was thinking that api3 would allow you to do cool stuff like easily return custom data fields without having to know the custom_# id.  Something like custom.set_name.field_name but maybe that is something for api4

Hey there,

I updated the page today with the two different ways you can use custom data and the API.  I am not sure if one of those methods is being deprecapted in favour of the other.  Anyone able to shed light?

Michael

This is how I use the basic API v3 to get the full contact info:

$params = array( 'contact_id' => $cid, 'version' => 3, );
$retrieved = civicrm_api('Contact','Get',$params);

I have a custom data set called "Host availability", with fields "Availability", "End Date" and "Vacancy".  Here's how to get these values:

$params = array( 'entity_id' => $cid, 'version' => 3,
  'entity_table' => '',
  'return.host_availability:availability' => 1,
  'return.host_availability:end_date' => 1,
  'return.host_availability:vacancy' => 1,
  'sequential' => 1,
  );
$fields = civicrm_api('CustomValue','Get',$params);
if( $fields['is_error'] == 0)
{
  $Availability = $fields['values'][0][0];
  $strEndDate = $fields['values'][1][0];
  $IsVacancy = $fields['values'][2][0];
}

Note the use of "sequential".  If you don't use this, then you get results such as $fields['values'][133][0] where 133 is the custom_133 value that you are trying to avoid.

The mapping between custom data set/fields names and the machine name to use in $params isn't necessarily as easy as hinted at above.  For precise details, look in tables civicrm_custom_group and civicrm_custom_field.

If you get the field element wrong then all the all fields in the data set are returned (with error in Drupal log), eg:
  'return.host_availability:wrong' => 1,

The empty 'entity_table' value avoids a warning being written to the Drupal log.

To set or update a custom value, this works:

$params = array(
   'version' => 3,
   'entity_id' => $cid,
   'custom_133' => 'value',
);
civicrm_api( 'custom_value','create',$params );

Hey there,

I would definitley file an issue patch for that for the reasons that you mention below. always good to have the code clean and shiny

Michael

karma+

(my personal hatred is the one letter variable names - still I imagine the person who put them there hates my over-long-superdescriptive variable names - perhaps having autocomplete shades my judgement here)

Surely having kids has taught you to get over the idea small things are cute & to realise small = chaos.