CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,

I am struggling with the CiviCRM API and I'm not sure whether I'm using the right functions.

I have a group which has a custom field (id: custom_5, name: Ownership). What I want is to get the custom fields for one group. I use the following code so far:

$results=civicrm_api(
  "CustomValue", "get",
  array ('version' => '3', 'entity_id' => $group_id, 'entity_type' => 'group', 'entity_table' => 'civicrm_group')
  );

The result is quite what I need, however, CustomValue returns a warning.

Notice: Undefined offset: 2 in civicrm_api3_custom_value_get() (Zeile 171 von DRUPALROOT/sites/all/modules/civicrm/api/v3/CustomValue.php).

I also tried the API function Group.get, but this function does not return custom fields.

Thus, my questions are:

• Do I use the right API call and the right parameters? How do I get rid of the warning?
• Is there a better alternative? One that for instance returns all groups and their custom fields?

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks for your help
Stephan

Erik, thanks for your reply. I think the group API doesn't return any custom fields (a pity though). I tried Group.get with custom_5 as a return value, but no success. So I'll pursue my approach and let you know.

Agree with X, would be great if you could add the ability to retrieve custom fields to the group API!

I submitted a patch here: http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-10035 
The patch works for me. I'll be glad to get your feedback on the jira issue.

With the patch, I can use a much nicer API call

$results=civicrm_api(
  "Group",
  "get",
   array ('version' =>'3', 'id' =>$group_id)
);

I'd really like avoiding that *by default* the request is more complex than needed. Ie if I just want the name of the groups and their id, that'd be a shame to fetch as well to do an extra sql (or several) to fetch all the custom data, waste memory/bandwidth to store stuff I won't use anyway.

We have started using a param return (for contact.get for instance), where you can be specific about what you want.

$results=civicrm_api(
  "Group",
  "get",
   array ('version' =>'3', 'id' =>$group_id, return=array ('id', 'name', 'custom_42'))
);


So by default it doesn't fetch the custom fields, and if you need them, that's still a clean call.

@eileen,

_civicrm_api3_custom_data_get doesn't see the param so we have to check on each calling api if it's needed to get the custom data (if in return).

Should we add a _civicrm_api3_return_custom ($params that checks if there is a custom_X in $params[return] and if (_civicrm_api3_return_custom($params))  {
_civicrm_api3_custom_data_get (...)}
?

stephang - The syntax Xavier describes should work in 4.2 (some work has been done) but is inconsistent in 4.1 & earlier. You can probably use 'return.custom_42' => 1 in 4.2 & earlier.

Xavier - just the custom field get could do with work - ideally we'd find a way of including it in the get query - but then we are starting to duplicate the query object so not sure that's the right path.

But, yes, passing in the params & reducing the get would help