CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

This question is in relation to my IMBA/CAMBr integration extension, posted under Developer Discussion.

I need to be notified when a custom field is edited, and I need to know both the previous and current value for the field. The hook_civicrm_custom hook is called after the DB write, the $params passed to it do not include the previous value, and there is no "pre" counterpart for it. After looking at the other available hooks, I decided that I might be able to do something with the form hooks. After logging calls to hook_civicrm_postProcess and the data passed to it, I've come up with the following.


function cambr_civicrm_postProcess($formName, &$form) {

if (!isset($form->_entityId))

return;

$before = $after = array();

foreach($form->_submitValues as $name => $value) {

if (strpos($name, 'custom_') === 0) {

list($custom, $field_id, $custom_id) = explode('_', $name);

$after['custom_' . $field_id] = $value;

foreach($form->_groupTree as $group_id => $group) {

foreach($group['fields'] as $field) {

if ($field['element_name'] == $name) {

$before['custom_' . $field_id] = $field['element_value'];

break;

}

}

}

}

}

if (isset($after['custom_12']) && ($after['custom_12'] != $before['custom_12'])) {

// do something with $before

// do something with $after

}
}

This works.

I don't know specifically about CiviCRM, but I know of multiple other systems where instance variables prefaced with an underscore are considered for internal use. As such, I'm slightly concerned about whether this function will continue to work as expected in the long term. Having looked at the docs for HTML_QuickForm and the source for CRM_Core_Form, I do see that I can get to the submitValues with a proper getter, but I cannot find a way to determine the default/previous values that I found in _groupTree.

I'm hoping that somebody that knows better can tell me if there is a proper/better way to do this, and what the chances of this breaking in the future are.

Thank you for your time.

Dave

Thanks for the reply Erik.

I'm sorry I failed to mention here that pre and post are not called for custom fields. I do use the post hook to capture the standard data that I need.

I believe I have come up with what would be the best solution. Looking at CRM_Utils_Hook I found that the civicrm_custom hook is called via it's static method custom. Doing a search for "::custom(", I found that the hook is ultimately called from CRM_Core_BAO_CustomValueTable::create. Below is my updated version of this function, minus a bunch of stuff in the middle, that utilizes CRM_Core_BAO_CustomValueTable::getEntityValues to get the previous values before the query is executed, and adds a previous_value key to each field that gets passed to the civicrm_custom hook.

This all takes place on edit only, and works for single or multiple values. Being very new to CiviCRM, I can't say that some other situation may need to be addressed. But, it works for my current needs.

I placed the file at CRM/Core/BAO/CustomValueTable.php of the extension and it works. Of course, if a change is made to this class in the future then this could all break. Ideally, it would be nice if these changes could be made to core.


  static function create(&$customParams) {
    if (empty($customParams) ||
      !is_array($customParams)
    ) {
      return;
    }

    foreach ($customParams as $tableName => $tables) {
      foreach ($tables as $index => $fields) {
        $sqlOP      = NULL;
        $hookID     = NULL;
        $hookOP     = NULL;
        $entityID   = NULL;
        $isMultiple = FALSE;
        $set        = array();
        $params     = array();
        $count      = 1;
        $fieldIDs   = NULL; // add by konadave
        foreach ($fields as $field) {
          if (!$sqlOP) {
            $entityID   = $field['entity_id'];
            $hookID     = $field['custom_group_id'];
            $isMultiple = $field['is_multiple'];
            if (array_key_exists('id', $field)) {
              $sqlOP          = "UPDATE $tableName ";
              $where          = " WHERE  id = %{$count}";
              $params[$count] = array($field['id'], 'Integer');
              $count++;
              $hookOP = 'edit';
              $fieldIDs = array(); // add by konadave
            }
            else {
              $sqlOP  = "INSERT INTO $tableName ";
              $where  = NULL;
              $hookOP = 'create';
            }
          }
          if (is_array($fieldIDs)) { // add by konadave
          

$fieldIDs[] = $field['custom_field_id'];
          }

          [ snip ]

          // add by konadave
          if (is_array($fieldIDs)) {

$new_fields = array();

$pre_values = self::getEntityValues($entityID, NULL, $fieldIDs);

foreach($fields as $field) {

$fid = $field['custom_field_id'] . ($field['is_multiple'] ? '_' . $field['id'] : '');

$field['previous_value'] = isset($pre_values[$fid]) ? $pre_values[$fid] : NULL;

$new_fields['custom_' . $field['custom_field_id']] = $field;

}

$fields = $new_fields;
          }
          // end add by konadave

          $dao = CRM_Core_DAO::executeQuery($query, $params);

          CRM_Utils_Hook::custom($hookOP,
            $hookID,
            $entityID,
            $fields
          );
        }
      }
    }
  }