SugarCRM SOAP API Examples

By popular request, here are some examples that worked for me when using the SOAP API offered by SugarCRM. Its nice that there is an interface, but it isn’t brilliantly documented or nearly as widely used as it should be!

SugarCRM can’t talk to PHP 5 native SOAP libraries in WSDL mode, so connect without it. Find below a series of queries that each worked for me, all just dumped here in succession, don’t try to run this whole piece of code – it is intended as a series of examples. Use each line and then var_dump($response) to see what’s happening.

// set up options array
$options = array(
        "location" => 'http://192.168.1.129/aeat/spm/crm/soap.php',
        "uri" => 'http://www.sugarcrm.com/sugarcrm',
        "trace" => 1
        );
// connect to soap server
$client = new SoapClient(NULL, $options);

// look what modules sugar exposes
$response = $client->get_available_modules($session_id);

// look in more detail at the fields in the Accounts module
$response = $client->get_module_fields($session_id, 'Accounts');

// look for a particular account name and then get its ID
$response = $client->get_entry_list($session_id, 'Accounts', 'name like "%LornaJane%"');
$account_id = $response->entry_list[0]->id;

// create a new account record and grab its ID
$response = $client->set_entry($session_id, 'Accounts', array(
            array("name" => 'name', "value" => 'New Company')
            ));
$account_id = $response->id;

// create a new contact record, assigned to this account, and grab the contact ID
$response = $client->set_entry($session_id, 'Contacts', array(
            array("name" => 'first_name',"value" => 'Geek'),
            array("name" => 'last_name',"value" => 'Smith'),
            array("name" => 'email1',"value" => '[email protected]'),
            array("name" => 'account_id',"value" => $account_id)
            ));
$contact_id = $response->id;

I hope this helps – if you have anything to add, or would like to post some examples, please do :)

35 thoughts on “SugarCRM SOAP API Examples”

LornaJane on April 24, 2008 at 16:34 said:

Since SugarCRM only works with PHP5 in non-WSDL mode, I had to create all my calls from scratch. The SugarCRM documentation is somewhat minimal, as I may have mentioned, and I found I was mostly reading the WSDL to figure out how to format my SOAP calls.

Reply ↓
Jeremy Heslop on April 28, 2008 at 20:49 said:

Thanks! I’ve been looking for some good sugar soap examples. I look forward to seeing what else you come up with in the future.

Reply ↓
LornaJane on April 28, 2008 at 21:12 said:

Jeremy, thanks for dropping by – I will certainly be adding things as I find them. I don’t work with sugarcrm all the time but when I do, I’ll be posting :)

Reply ↓
Nigel James on May 23, 2008 at 11:41 said:

Thanks for this LornaJame. This just look like what we are looking for.
Cheers,
Nigel

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LornaJane on May 23, 2008 at 12:06 said:

Nigel: Glad to help – thanks for dropping by and commenting :)

Reply ↓
Darcy on September 23, 2008 at 00:51 said:

thank you! would love to see more examples to help me grasp this concept… appreciate the insight :)

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LornaJane on September 26, 2008 at 21:35 said:

Darcy: Next time I am working with sugarcrm and SOAP, I’ll see what I can add to this. There is nothing like a working code example when you’re just getting to grips with something, I know!

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Josh on December 5, 2008 at 19:42 said:

Wow! Thank you for this sample. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’ a shame that Sugar doesn’t have simple, clear examples like this.

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LornaJane on December 6, 2008 at 21:27 said:

Josh: I’m very happy to hear these examples helped – once I’d managed to get mine working it seemed important to share! I know sugarcrm are doing more with their services though so watch for better things coming from them in the future

Reply ↓
mwic on February 16, 2009 at 15:49 said:

I’m just commenting ’cause you told me to, not ’cause I’m brilliant or anything.

You often have to fully qualify fields for Sugar SOAPiness to work, e.g.

$query = ” username_c like ‘%$keyword%’ or first_name like ‘%$keyword%’ “; //fails unhelpfully saying “Looks like we got no XML document.. ”

$query = ” username_c like ‘%$keyword%’ or `contacts`.first_name like ‘%$keyword%’ “; //works!

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LornaJane on February 18, 2009 at 08:47 said:

mwic: If only brilliant people were allowed to comment, it would be *much* quieter around here!! Thanks for adding your findings, hopefully they’ll be helpful to the next person who comes here looking for info.

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dean on March 9, 2009 at 16:42 said:

your examples are great, and i’ve got my soap connection working remotely with my server here in house–that is, i get a response from my query, so i know it’s making some connection to sugar, but i’m getting an invalid session ID error. it seems this is caused by not logging in or something… any thoughts? i didn’t see an authentication example using regular soap… all of sugar’s use nusoap… boo…

thanks!

Reply ↓
- GuruBob on October 16, 2009 at 21:47 said:
  
  Hi Dean, came across this post last night and had your problem. I lazily copy/pasted the above code and dropped a var_dump in to inspect the results of the SOAP call. You need to log into sugar first before you can make these calls, and you can do so with:
  
  $session_id = $client->login(array(
  ‘user_name’=>’bob’,
  ‘password’=>’password’
  ),__FILE__)->id;
  
  Then (assuming your credentials are correct) you have a $session_id to pass into other calls.
  
  Reply ↓
dean on April 13, 2009 at 12:39 said:

I’m writing more examples for the community based off of what you have here.

Check out
http://deanhaddock.com/mercury/2009/04/10/sugarcrm-soap-examples/

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ritesh on August 8, 2009 at 06:11 said:

Hey , i am trying to pass , queries via browser , to soap server , what changes do i need to make in server?

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LornaJane on August 11, 2009 at 19:36 said:

Ritesh: to consume a soap service, you will need a soap client of some kind. Until the new sugarcrm version is out with rest services, a browser can’t talk to the services. Hope that helps

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GUiLTY on October 24, 2009 at 01:58 said:

If you get this error:
Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array
when trying to read the result as an array, use this function.

function objectToArray( $object )
{
if( !is_object( $object ) && !is_array( $object ) )
{
return $object;
}
if( is_object( $object ) )
{
$object = get_object_vars( $object );
}
return array_map( ‘objectToArray’, $object );
}
this will convert the object returned by soap api to an array.

Reply ↓
- Bob Brown on October 28, 2009 at 11:15 said:
  
  No need to convert an object to an array to use it, just use the correct syntax.
  
  E.g. echo $result->name
  
  Reply ↓
Stuart Thomson on November 17, 2009 at 01:50 said:

Sugar CRM Dev Links

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Mikael on December 1, 2009 at 19:52 said:

Great blog!

I’m trying to update a custom value on an existing Account in sugar but without progress. This is what I try:

set_entry($sess, ‘Accounts’, array(
array(“name” => ‘id’,”value” => $TheId),
array(“name” => ‘customfield’,”value” => $updatedvalue)
));

Could you please help!

Thank you!
Mike

Reply ↓
LornaJane on December 3, 2009 at 22:11 said:

Mike: do you get an error message or does the field just not update? I’m not sure if I’ve tried custom fields with the services; can you update a “normal” field?

Reply ↓
- Mikael on December 4, 2009 at 11:53 said:
  
  Thanks for your answer!
  Yes I can update normal fields and one of my custom fields… Well, maybe it’s better to take a look at the command retrieving the data first. It looks like this:
  
  $result = $this->proxy->get_entry_list(
  $this->sess,
  ‘Accounts’,
  $query,
  $orderby,
  0,
  array(
  ‘openx_c’,
  ‘customfield_c’,
  ‘id’,
  ‘name’
  ),
  $maxnum,
  false
  );
  
  I’m trying to retrieve two custom fields: customfield_c and openx_c. The mystery is that I can retrieve customfield_c, but not openx_c.
  
  Any ideas?
  Regards,
  Mike
  
  Reply ↓
Sandi on June 25, 2010 at 03:37 said:

I don’t know if this is still monitored, but I could really use some help – this stuff is driving me NUTS! I am not getting back any info and I know that there are 3 records that would match. Also, when I put in information – it’s not entering the email address. Here’s my code:

require_once(‘inc/nusoap/nusoap.php’);

class SugarSoap{
var $proxy;
var $sess;

function SugarSoap($soap_url,$login=true){
$soapclient = new soapclient($soap_url,true);
$this->proxy = $soapclient->getProxy();
if($login) $this->login();
}

function login(){
$params = array(
‘user_name’ => ‘uname’,
‘password’ => md5(‘password’),
‘version’ => ‘.01′
);
$result = $this->proxy->login($params,’MyApp’);
$this->sess= $result[‘error’][‘number’]==0 ? $result[‘id’] : null;
return $this->sess;
}
function getContacts($query=”,$maxnum=5,$orderby=’ last_name asc’){

$result = $this->proxy->get_entry_list(
$this->sess,
‘Contacts’,
$query,
“”,
0,
array(
‘id’,
‘first_name’,
‘last_name’,
’email1′
),
$maxnum,
false
);
return $result;
}
function nameValuePairToSimpleArray($array){
$my_array=array();
while(list($name,$value)=each($array)){
$my_array[$value[‘name’]]=$value[‘value’];
}
return $my_array;
}
function setEntry($module,$array){
$data_array=array();
while(list($name,$value)=each($array)){
$data_array[]= array(
‘name’ => $name,
‘value’ => $value );
}
$result = $this->proxy->set_entry(
$this->sess,
$module,
$data_array );
return $result;
}
function setContact($array){
return $this->setEntry(“Contacts”,$array);
}
function createUser($email,$lname,$fname,$utype,$school,$leadsrc){
return $this->setContact(array(
“email1” => $email,
“last_name” => $lname,
“first_name” => $fname,
“usertype_c” => $utype,
“school_c” => $school,
“lead_source” => $leadsrc ));
}
}

$soap=new SugarSoap(‘http://agame.sugarondemand.com/soap.php?wsdl’); // we automatically log in

$result=$soap->getContacts(‘ email1 like “%”‘,5,” last_name desc”);
print_r($result);
if($result[‘result_count’]>0){
foreach($result[‘entry_list’] as $record){
$array= $soap->nameValuePairToSimpleArray($record[‘name_value_list’]);
echo $array[‘first_name’] . ” ” . $array[‘last_name’] . ” – ” . $array[’email1′]. “
“;
}
} else {
echo “No contacts found”;
}
$result=$soap->createUser(’[email protected]’,’Lastname’,’Firstname’,’Employer’,’Somewhere’,’Campaign’);

Reply ↓
- dean on June 25, 2010 at 13:33 said:
  
  sandi–
  
  check out some of my examples at http://systemsconsciousness.com/?s=sugarcrm+soap
  
  the one titled ‘sugarcrm soap examples’ has some code that will hopefully help you.
  
  dean
  
  Reply ↓
LornaJane on June 30, 2010 at 21:15 said:

This is great! Sandi: thanks for your comment. Dean: thanks for your very helpful reply! I don’t have any specific advice other than if one field doesn’t save, double- and triple-check your field names for that field. For the missing records, start will a full list and add criteria one at a time, until you see which one causes your records to disappear. Good luck :)

Reply ↓
GUILHERME on July 3, 2010 at 22:07 said:

Hi People !
Thanks a LOT LORNAJANE !

To get the session ! take this PHP NATIVE SOAP

http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showpost.php?p=112331&postcount=5

Reply ↓
inyaka on August 18, 2010 at 17:11 said:

tanks for you help ;)

Reply ↓
Ajit Singh on April 7, 2011 at 08:15 said:

Hi can any one tell me how to delete all data for a module.

OR

Can i update all the row in a column in an iteration.

Reply ↓
Cosmin on September 28, 2011 at 10:17 said:

Hello,

Is the first time that i work with sugarCRM.. i need to register from a form 2 fields directly into sugarcrm.. this is my php code ..

‘http://URL/sugarcrm/soap.php’,
“uri” => ‘http://www.sugarcrm.com/sugarcrm’,
“trace” => 1
);

//user authentication array
$user_auth = array(
“user_name” => ‘user’,
“password” => MD5(‘pass’),
“version” => ‘.01′
);

// connect to soap server
$client = new SoapClient(NULL, $options);

// Login to SugarCRM
$response = $client->login($user_auth,’test’);

$session_id = $response->id;

$user_id = $client->get_user_id($session_id);

$response = $client->set_entry($session_id, ‘Targets’, array(
array(“name” => ‘last_name’,”value” => ‘$_POST[nome]’),
array(“name” => ’email1′,”value” => ‘$_POST[email]’),
array(“name” => ‘assigned_user_id’,”value” => $user_id)
));

var_dump($response);

?>
After clicking SUBMIT, i receive an error “INTERNAL SERVER ERROR”. My sugarCRM is on a virtual machine (bitnami/ ubuntu 10.10).

Best regards,

Cosmin

Reply ↓
Stuart Grimshaw on February 12, 2013 at 11:47 said:

5 years later & this is still the easiest to read example of using the SugarCRM REST interface … even though the example is for SOAP :-)

I used it to double check the format of the calls to set_entry, for my upcoming SugarCRM library, Cane

https://github.com/Stubbs/cane

Reply ↓
Kostenlose Alternative on February 14, 2013 at 13:52 said:

Thanks Stuart your Link safes me a lot of time….

Reply ↓
Jason Judge on October 1, 2013 at 13:48 said:

I have been developing a library to interact with the “REST” API:

https://github.com/academe/sugarrestapi

The documentation needs a tidy-up, and bits need completing, but it works and is in operation on a number of sites. I kind of do a bit more on it for each project. With this library you basically log in, which gives you a login session key. You can retain this session key between pages or users to avoid logging in for every page load.

Once logged in, there are objects for dealing with Entries and EntryLists. The EntryLists support paging, and can pull in data from relationships. Hopefully it will be useful to someone, but please ask if it dos not make sense or you cannot see how to achieve a particular task. Anything that helps me decide what to put into the documentation can only help :-)

— Jason

Reply ↓
Marta on March 21, 2014 at 12:17 said:

Hi !
Thanks a lot for this, LORNAJANE !
I’m completely new in SugarCRM. At the moment I’m trying to populate dropdowns through my web services.
I can already fill those values, but when I want to show that value in listview or put it in a pdf, instead of the value it only shows the position of the array and not the value.
Can you help me? I really appreciate if you can, because I’m trying to solve this problem a few days ago and can not find the solution.
I’m customizing a community edition.
Thanks in advance,

Marta

Reply ↓
David on June 18, 2014 at 11:46 said:

Did you try to relation with other module?

Reply ↓
- lornajane on June 27, 2014 at 14:01 said:
  
  I didn’t, and I haven’t touched sugarcrm again since writing this post, sorry I can’t help
  
  Reply ↓

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SugarCRM SOAP API Examples

35 thoughts on “SugarCRM SOAP API Examples”

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