CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

It hasn't been done - but the standards doc is pretty up to date so start from here

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/API+Architecture+Standards

Should I implement it against the latest trunk version or the stable 4.1 version that I'm using?

OK, doing it against trunk. It seems to be easiest. Just copied the trunk version of the api folder over to my installation, copied ContributionRecur.php to ContributionPage.php and changed the calls from contribution_recur to contribution_page. Didn't even have to think much. Might have to check that everything works but basic get seems to just work. Trunk seems to have a good abstraction and make the API even simpler! Since I'm at it I might ensure that only valid calls can be made. I saw that there is at least one variable variable in there. I guess because it's inside a function there are no major security concerns?

I will probably not need much more of the API, but will keep this thread open for when/if I get to problems.

Patch attached.

Thanks!

Hi,

The api itself should be fairly easy to write (hopefully) - but please make sure you add a unit test too! Otherwise it has no future proofing

Eileen

Mh, maybe not as easy as I hoped for. It seems like the CREATE call loops forever now in some weird calling itself way. Debugging gets confusing because the civicrm_api function gets called multiple times over and over. However, when I have the debugger running on it it returns after a bit. If no debugger is attached I get a white page, one of the reasons I'm starting to dislike PHP. Wondering now if the API is not fully compatible with 4.1 and whether I should try the trunk version with possible instabilities or do the "tedious" 4.1 way of doing it. I guess to have it supported down the road doing it in trunk is the only option, however risky for this project.

What do you think? I've used cutting edge stuff before in projects because it usually has features that are new and for our test purpouses it seemed to run better in that case (OpenLayers), but newer is not always better.

Hmm - there is some debug stuff associated with x_debug in the api - which might be causing the loop.

Yes, the API does call itself a few times - mostly it calls the 'getfields' function when checking required fields are set, merging fields, doing validation. We cache the getfields response but it is a bit confusing in debugging - esp if you have x_debug on.

I actually always write the tests while doing any api development & I put the debug in the tests themselves.

Just to give you a status update:

Finally got unit tests to work on my machine. Output:

$ scripts/phpunit -uroot -pPASS -hlocalhost -bcivicrm_tests_dev api_v3_ContactTest
PHPUnit 3.6.10 by Sebastian Bergmann.

.
Installing civicrm_tests_dev database
............................................................

Time: 01:34, Memory: 56.00Mb

OK (61 tests, 157 assertions)
Was not hard but not trivial either.

So, now off to write my own tests for the ContributionPage CRUD extension of the API.