CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We have some group custom fields which are Data type: Contact reference and Field type: Autocomplete Select. There are several fields in the set, listing group leaders, administrators, hosts etc

I would like to be able to create a view or export which shows these fields for numerous groups at once.  Ideally I want to specify which groups I see using the Group Type filter.  A friend has attempted to do this using the api generator and said he could get the fact that the custom field existed but couldn't retrieve any actual data.

Is this somehting we can achieve without coding?  Any tips on the best way forward gratefully received.  Thanks.

Ok, so I was taking a look at what LindseyM's friend was trying to do; and it boils down to this api call:

$groups = civicrm_api('Group', 'Get', array('is_hidden' => 0, 'version' => 3, 'return.custom_206' => 1));

This returns the error 'DB Error: no such field' when called. It seems the api code doesn't have the necessary plumbing to load the custom fields..

I think what you want is
civicrm_api('custom_value', 'get', array('version' => 3, 'return.custom_206' => 1));

I'd worked around this in the previous case by directly doing an SQL query.  I've now run into this again so am trying via the API but am failing to get anything to work with 4.1. I've not tried on 4.2.

Try this:
$groups = civicrm_api('Group', 'Get', array('is_hidden' => 0, 'version' => 3, 'return = 'custom_206'));

This doesn't seem to work, it returns just the regular group information.

I think what you want is
civicrm_api('custom_value', 'get', array('version' => 3, 'return.custom_206' => 1));

This requires an entity_id to be set which I believe only refers to contacts and not groups?

Looking at the api logic it seems that there is no consideration for the custom fields in the CRM_Contact_BAO_Group class that the api calls through to.

It doesn't seem to work via the Group Get api. The custom values api wants an entity_id, which as far as I can make out is a contact_id, unless theres some mapping between group_id and entity_id's that I'm missing?

Hmm it seems slightly broken:

/civicrm/ajax/rest?json=1&sequential=1&debug=1&&entity=CustomValue&action=get&entity_id=6
Gives output:
{
   "is_error":1,
   "error_message":"No values found for the specified entity ID and custom field(s)."
}

whereas:
/civicrm/ajax/rest?json=1&sequential=1&debug=1&&entity=CustomValue&action=get&entity_id=6&return.custom_206=1

gives:
{
   "is_error":0,
   "undefined_fields":["return_custom_206"],
   "version":3,
   "count":1,
   "id":206,
   "values":[{
      "entity_id":"6",
      "latest":"16202",
      "id":"206",
      "0":"16202"
   }]
}

which gives the correct values but something is clearly broken as it returns 'undefined_fields' set. I'd expect to get all values out if I don't explicitly set a return values, and for undefined_fields not to be set in the above case.