CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

1) I think the general recommendation has been to use the CustomValue API when filtering on custom-fields for any entity besides "Contact". I think that would work for your example, but this has a limitation -- it doesn't allow complex queries that filter on both core fields and custom fields.

2) There's some code here which purports to return custom-data for activities (~ L283 - L292):

https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.4/api/v3/Activity.php#L283

3) I don't know if anyone's tried, but based on my finite understanding, there's an interesting place where one might introduce generic support for filtering on single-row custom fields -- _civicrm_api3_dao_set_filter():

https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/api/v3/utils.php#L505

If I understand correctly, this is used by most of the "get" APIs (except Contact.get). However, it might not work because it represents the query with $dao and you need to add a dynamic JOIN for the custom-data table... and $dao sucks for adding dynamic JOINs.

4) If you really need complex queries, it might be easier to write your own API (like I mentioned in the other thread).

totten:

I think the general recommendation has been to use the CustomValue API when filtering on custom-fields for any entity besides "Contact"

Yes, I think that would work for our use case. Am I right to think that this would require chaining? All the chaining-related API documentation I find seems to be aimed at 'create' functions; any reference to docs on how to do what you're describing?

Thanks,
A.

Thanks for the links, totten.

Based on what I'm reading those examples, I thought something like this might work.

Intent: find activities where contact 50058 is referenced in the custom_2 custom data field.
Rest URL: /civicrm/ajax/rest?entity=Activity&action=get&api.customvalue.get[id]=2&api.customvalue.get[entity_id]=$value.id&api.customvalue.get[value]=50058

But that just returns the first 25 activities, each one with this appended:
    <api_customvalue_get>
        <is_error>1</is_error>
        <error_message>API (customvalue, get) does not exist (join the API team and implement it!)</error_message>
    </api_customvalue_get>

Note the comma in "API (customvalue, get) does not exist". That looks suspicious, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

I'm open to any further advice on making this work.

Thanks!

- Allen

Good tip on the JSON parameters. Thanks, Tim.

I was finally able to get the custom field value, but not by any means relying on the "return" parameter. Instead, something like this does work for a given activity:

/civicrm/ajax/rest?entity=Activity&action=get&json={"id":1296591,"api.CustomValue.get":{"id":2}}

But filtering activities on custom values seems to be a non-starter at present. I'm giving up for now and may come back to it later.

Thanks again for your help.

- Allen