CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi All,

I'm working on a CiviCRM set up that will be used to manage iPad app users to start with, but in the future, this system will also manage site members and perhaps other platforms.

So anyway the thing I'm struggling with is, what the best way to have custom fields( account number, password, etc...) and then link these in with the CiviMember section?
I'll quickly explain the system I'm currently working with.

I'm currently working for a not for profit magazine, and we're about to launch a new iPad app that allows our user to read our magazine from there iPad.
We have a fulfillment company that currently manage our print subscriptions, so will be communicating with their DB using their SOAP API to check the users subscription type and that it's still valid.
If the user has the correct sub type and is still valid, I'll then check the CiviCRM DB to make sure a user(contact/member) hasn't already be registered with that account number.
If the user has NOT be registered, then new user(contact/member) will be registered, saving the users account number(taken from the mag fulfillment comp DB) a password(create by the user) and perhaps a couple of other bits of info.
There will also be some info taken from the mag fulfillment comp DB, such as postcode and other contact info we have for them.

when the user come back to use the iPad app, they can now just login using there email and password.

I am using Drupal, but all of the calls will be made from the iPad app, so I can't use and Drupal generated pages and will mainly be using the PHP API and the jQuery calls for quick checks.

I have made some custom fields, but haven't managed to insert anything into them using the API..

I'm not sure I'm taking the correct approach with this, as I'm quite new to CiviCRM... I'm working through the book, but really I could do with someone who knows CiviCRM inside and out..

Any help would be much appreciated!!

Cheers,
Pete

Hi Harshell,
Thanks for pointing me to that page!  That pretty much answered it all for me.

Just got one quick question.
As there users are going to be members of our site in the future, would you suggest create some membership types, and linking them to these contacts?
Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,
Pete