CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Background

The Angular interface is built on the Mailing API. When a user creates a new mailing, there's a two step process:

• Navigate to /civicrm/a/#/mailing/new (aka CreateMailingCtrl). This page displays "Initializing" and calls the Mailing.create API. The API determines most defaults.
• Redirect to /civicrm/a/#/mailing/123 (aka EditMailingCtrl). This page calls the Mailing.get API and displays the actual content.

On the Angular side, you can trace the call-path for /mailing/new through these files:

• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/ang/crmMailing.js
• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/ang/crmMailing/services.js#L155 (crmMailingMgr.create)
• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/ang/crmMailing/services.js#L334 (crmMailingMgr.save)
• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/ang/crmMailing/CreateMailingCtrl.js

On the API side, the default values are determined mostly by the API "spec" and the schema:

• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/api/v3/Mailing.php#L131
• https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/4.6/xml/schema/Mailing/Mailing.xml

However, the list of groups is a bit special because it's not stored directly on the Mailing record. It's stored as a list of MailingGroup records.

Tips

My expectation is that the Mailing.create API should fire a "post" hook after it creates the new record. So I'd first try implementing that hook and adding some code to insert the desired MailingGroup records.

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/hook_civicrm_post

If that doesn't work, then there might be an issue with order-of-operations, eg compare:

• OK:
  
  
  • Insert/update civicrm_mailing record (with default values, mostly empty)
  • Insert/update civicrm_mailing_group records (with default values, mostly empty)
  • Invoke hook_post(Mailing,create)
  
  
• Problematic:
  
  
  • Insert/update civicrm_mailing record (with default values, mostly empty)
  • Invoke hook_post(Mailing,create)
  • Insert/update civicrm_mailing_group records (with default values, mostly empty - trampling over anything your hook did)
  
  

If the order-of-operations is problematic, then you'd have to try a different hook. There's a way to run code strictly-before or strictly-after the main API logic -- define an API wrapper:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/hook_civicrm_apiWrappers

You were right - hook_civicrm_post doesn't work. Adding a group to the mailing there appeared to work but got clobbered somewhere along the way and didn't get retained.

I added a MailingGroup api call (API explorer says it's deprecated but I don't see an alternative) to a toApiOutput wrapper that fires on mailing create and it worked!
Except mailing create gets called every time a mailing is saved so it's impossible to remove the pre-added groups - they'll always get readded.

I'm cheating a little and only adding the groups if the mailing has no name. That way one can remove the default groups once the mailing has been named.
It's not great but it works.

Maybe there's a better place to add the groups to avoid having to do this but I don't see it.