CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am trying to populate a custom field on the Contact record with parliamentary information which exists on an external url at a site called theyworkforyou

I know what I need, but not sure how to go about it.

Whenever a contact is added or changed I would like to invoke a hook to update certain custom fields.

I have read through the hooks documents, but still am not sure what I need to code in the .php file in the custom PHP directory, other than using "hook_civicrm_pre", but I am not sure how to use that.

I am sure somebody must have done something similar, if not, can somebody please give me some guidelines (yes, I've read the custom email example) on how to achieve this.

Does anybody have an example of the complete .php file, including a URL call and database update that I can base my code on?

Yes, I know its cheating, but I am not a developer, so would welcome help please.  I'm fine with the SQL stuff, its just the webhooks I cant figure out.

Once completed, I'm happy to share my efforts with others.  (Its a Joomla installation)

Thanks.

You probably need the civicrm post hook. This is called whenever an object has been updated in the database. Here is an example for keeping an emailaddress synchronized between two applications.

In this example a specific function is called whenever there is an edit or create action on an email.

function silcivi_civicrm_post( $op, $objectName, $objectId, &$objectRef ) {
    if ( $objectName == "Email" ) {
        if ( $op == "edit" || $op == "create" ) {
            if ( isset( $objectRef->email ) && !empty( $objectRef->email ) ) {
                $emailExists = false;
                /*
                 * retrieve first, middle and last name of contact
                 */
                $getContactParams = array(
                    'version'           =>  3,
                    'contact_id'        =>  $objectRef->contact_id,
                    'return.first_name' =>  1,
                    'return.middle_name'=>  1,
                    'return.last_name'  =>  1
                );
                $getContact = civicrm_api("Contact", "Getsingle", $getContactParams );
                if ( isset( $getContact['first_name'] ) ) {
                    $first_name = $getContact['first_name'];
                } else {
                    $first_name = "";
                }
                if ( isset( $getContact['middle_name'] ) && !empty( $getContact['middle_name'] ) ) {
                    $last_name = $getContact['middle_name']." ";
                }
                if ( isset( $getContact['last_name'] ) ) {
                    if ( isset( $last_name ) ) {
                        $last_name .= $getContact['last_name'];
                    } else {
                        $last_name = $getContact['last_name'];
                    }
                }
                $last_name = trim( $last_name );
                if ( $op == "create" ) {
                    $checkParams = array(
                        'action'        =>  'check',
                        'email'         =>  $objectRef->email,
                        'first_name'    =>  $first_name,
                        'last_name'     =>  $last_name
                    );
                    $emailExists = _silcivi_processApi( $checkParams );
                }
                if ( !$emailExists ) {
                        $processParams = array(
                            'action'        =>  $op,
                            'email'         =>  $objectRef->email,
                            'email_id'      =>  $objectRef->id,
                            'contact_id'    =>  $objectRef->contact_id,
                            'first_name'    =>  $first_name,
                            'last_name'     =>  $last_name
                        );
                        $result = _silcivi_processApi( $processParams );
                }
            }
        }
    }
}



Have fun playing with the hooks :-)