PHP SDK is a wrapper for Zoho CRM APIs. Hence invoking a Zoho CRM API from your client PHP application is just a function call. It supports both single user as well as multi user authentication.

Registering a Zoho Client

Since Zoho CRM APIs are authenticated with OAuth2 standards, you should register your client app with Zoho. To register your app:

1. Visit this page https://accounts.zoho.com/developerconsole.
2. Click on Add Client ID.
3. Enter Client Name, Client Domain and Redirect URI.
4. Select the Client Type as Web based.
5. Click Create.
6. Your Client app would have been created and displayed by now.
7. The newly registered app's Client ID and Client Secret can be found by clicking Options → Edit.
   (Options is the three dot icon at the right corner).

Setting Up

PHP SDK is installable through composer. Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. SDK expects the following from the client app.

• Client app must have PHP 5.6 or above with curl extension enabled.
• PHP SDK must be installed into client app though composer.
• The function ZCRMRestClient::initialize() must be called on startup of app.
• MySQL should run in the same machine serving at the default port 3306.
• The database name should be zohooauth.
• There must be a table oauthtokens with the columns useridentifier(varchar(100)), accesstoken(varchar(100)), refreshtoken(varchar(100)), expirytime(bigint).

If token_persistence_path is provided in the oauth_configuration.properties file, then persistence happens only in the file. In this case, there is no need of MySQL. Create a empty file with name, zcrm_oauthtokens.txt, in the mentioned token_persistence_path.

Installation of PHP SDK through composer

Install Composer(if not installed)

Run this command to install the composer

To make the composer accessible globally, follow the instructions from the link below

Install PHP SDK

Here's how you install the SDK

1. navigate to the workspace of your client app
2. Run the command below:

   composer require zohocrm/php-sdk

3. Hence, the PHP SDK would be installed and a package named 'vendor' would be created in the workspace of your client app.

Configurations

Before you get started with creating your php application, you need to first authenticate the app with Zoho. And to do that there are some configuration procedures that need to be in place. There are two methods in which you can authenticate your application:

• Passing a configuration array - and then call ZCRMRestClient::initialize($configuration);
  • The array option is available only for version 1.1.0 and above.
• Using properties files in resources folder- and then call ZCRMRestClient::initialize();

Properties file

Your OAuth Client details should be given to the PHP SDK as a property file. In PHP SDK, we have placed a configuration file (oauth_configuration.properties). Please place the respective values in that file. You can find that file under ‘vendor/zohocrm/php-sdk/src/resources’.

Please fill only the following keys. Based on your domain(EU,CN) please change the value of 'accounts_url'. Default value set as US domain.

• Only the keys displayed above are to be filled.
• client_id, client_secret and redirect_uri are your OAuth client’s configurations that you get after registering your Zoho client.
• access_type must be set to offline only because online OAuth client is not supported by the PHP SDK as of now.
• persistence_handler_class is the implementation of the ZohoOAuthPersistenceInterface i.e. ZohoOAuthPersistenceHandler.
• token_persistence_path is the path to store the OAuth related tokens in file. If this is set, no need of database for persistence. Persistence happens through file only.

Create a file named “ZCRMClientLibrary.log” in your client app machine and mention the absolute path of the created file in configuration.properties for the key “applicationLogFilePath”. You can find that file under 'vendor/zohocrm/php-sdk/src/resources'. This file is to log the exceptions occurred during the usage of PHP SDK.

Please fill only the following key

To make API calls to sandbox account, please change the value of following key to true in configurations.properties file. By default the value is false.

If your application needs only a single user authentication then you have to set the user EmailId in configurations.properties file as given below:

In order to work with multi user authentication, you need to set the user EmailId in PHP super global variable ‘$_SERVER’ as given below:

You can use $_SERVER variable for single user authentication as well, but it is recommended to go with setting up of email Id in configuration.properties file.

If you do not set the user email as a super global variable, then SDK expects it from configuration.properties file. If user email is not set in any of these two then PHP SDK will throw exception.

Configuration Array

You can now pass the configuration values as php array(key-value pair) as argument when you call the ZCRMRestclient::initialize() function. Below is the list of keys that are to be in the array.

Mandatory Keys	Optional Keys
client_id	applicationLogFilePath
client_secret	sandbox
redirect_uri	apiBaseUrl
currentUserEmail	apiVersion
client_secret	access_type
	accounts_url
	persistence_handler_class
	token_persistence_path

Below is an example of a PHP array containing the mandatory keys.

Below is an example of a PHP array containing all the keys.

Initialization

The app would be ready to be initialized after defining the OAuth configuration file.

Generating self-authorized grant and refresh token

For self client apps, the self authorized grant token should be generated from the Zoho Developer Console (https://accounts.zoho.com/developerconsole)

1. Visit https://accounts.zoho.com/developerconsole
2. Click Options → Self Client of the client for which you wish to authorize.
3. Enter one or more(comma separated) valid Zoho CRM scopes, that you wish to authorize, in the “Scope” field and choose a time of expiry. Provide “aaaserver.profile.READ” scope along with Zoho CRM scopes.
4. Copy the grant token for backup.
5. Generate refresh_token from grant token by making a POST request with the URL below

   https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/token?code={grant_token}&redirect_uri={redirect_uri}&client_id={client_id}&client_secret={client_secret}&grant_type=authorization_code

6. Copy the refresh token for backup.

Please note that the generated grant token is valid only for the stipulated time you choose while generating it. Hence, the access and refresh tokens should be generated within that time.

Generating an access token

Access token can be generated by grant token or refresh token. Following any one of the two methods is sufficient.

Generating Access token from Grant token

The following code snippet should be executed from your main class to get access and refresh tokens. Please paste the copied grant token in the string literal mentioned below. This is a one-time process.

Please note that the above code snippet is valid only once per grant token. Upon successful execution of the above code snippet, the generated access and refresh tokens would have been persisted through our persistence handler class.

Generating Access token from Refresh token

The following code snippet should be executed from your main class to get access and refresh tokens. Please paste the generated refresh token in the string literal mentioned below. This is a one-time process.

Upon successful execution of the above code snippet, the generated access token and given refresh token would have been persisted through our persistence handler class.

Once the OAuth tokens have been persisted, subsequent API calls would use the persisted access and refresh tokens. The PHP SDK will take care of refreshing the access token using refresh token, as and when required.

App Startup

The PHP SDK requires the following line of code invoked every time your client app is started.

Once the PHP SDK has been initialized by the above line, you could use any APIs of the SDK to get proper results.

Using the PHP SDK

Add the below line in your client app PHP files, where you would like to make use of PHP SDK.

Through this line, you can access all the functionalities of the PHP SDK.

Class Hierarchy

All Zoho CRM entities are modelled as classes having properties and functions applicable to that particular entity. ZCRMRestClient is the base class of the PHP SDK. ZCRMRestClient has functions to get instances of various other Zoho CRM entities.

The class relations and hierarchy of the SDK follows the entity hierarchy inside Zoho CRM. The class hierarchy of various Zoho CRM entities are given below:

ZCRMRestClient
     -ZCRMOrganization
          -ZCRMUser
               -ZCRMUserTheme
               -ZCRMUserCustomizeInfo
         -ZCRMRole
         -ZCRMProfile
              -ZCRMPermission
              -ZCRMProfileSection
                   -ZCRMProfileCategory
        -ZCRMModule
             -ZCRMLayout
                  -ZCRMSection
                       -ZCRMField
                       -ZCRMPickListValue
                       -ZCRMLookupField
                  -ZCRMLeadConvertMapping
                       -ZCRMLeadConvertMappingField
             -ZCRMCustomView
                  -ZCRMCustomViewCategory
                  -ZCRMCustomViewCriteria
             -ZCRMRelatedListProperties
                  -ZCRMModuleRelatedList
             -ZCRMRecord
             -ZCRMNote
             -ZCRMAttachment
             -ZCRMInventoryLineItem
                  -ZCRMTax
             -ZCRMEventParticipant
             -ZCRMPriceBookPricing
             -ZCRMModuleRelation
             -ZCRMJunctionRecord
             -ZCRMTrashRecord

Each entity class has functions to fetch its own properties and to fetch data of its immediate child entities through an API call.

For example: a Zoho CRM module (ZCRMModule) object will have member functions to get a module’s properties like display name, module Id, etc, and will also have functions to fetch all its child objects (like ZCRMLayout).

Instance object

It isn’t always effective to follow the complete class hierarchy from the top to fetch the data of an entity at some lower level, since this would involve API calls at each level. In order to handle this, every entity class will have a getInstance() function to get its own dummy object and functions to get dummy objects of its child entities.

Please note that the getInstance() function would not have any of its properties filled because it would not fire an API call. This would just return a dummy object that shall be only used to access the non-static functions of the class.

Summing it up,

• ZCRMRestClient::getModule(“Contacts”) would return the actual Contacts module, that has all the properties of the Contacts module filled through an API call.
• ZCRMRestClient::getModuleInstance(“Contacts”) would return a dummy ZCRMModule object that would refer to the Contacts module, with no properties filled, since this doesn’t make an API call.

Hence, to get records from a module, it is not necessary that you need to start from ZCRMRestClient. Instead, you could get a ZCRMModule instance with ZCRMModule::getInstance() and then invoke its non-static getRecords() function from the created instance. This would avoid the API call which would have been triggered to populate the ZCRMModule object.

Accessing record properties

Since record properties are dynamic across modules, only the fields like createdTime, createBy, owner etc, are given as ZCRMRecord’s default properties. All other record properties are available as a map in ZCRMRecord object.

To access the individual field values of a record, use the getter and setter functions available. The keys of the record properties map are the API names of the module’s fields. All fields API names of all modules are available under Setup → Marketplace → APIs → CRM API → API Names.

• To get a field value, use $record → getFieldValue($fieldAPIName);
• To set a field value, use $record → setFieldValue($fieldAPIName, $newValue);
  While setting a field value, make sure that the set value has the same data type as the field to which you are going to set it.

Response Handling

APIResponse and BulkAPIResponse are wrapper objects for Zoho CRM APIs’ responses. All API calling functions would return one of these two objects.

• DownloadFile and downloadPhoto returns FileAPIResponse instead of APIResponse.
• A function which seeks a single entity would return an APIResponse, and a function which seeks a list of entities would return a BulkAPIResponse object.
• Use the getData() function to get the entity data alone from the response wrapper objects. APIResponse → getData() would return a single Zoho CRM entity object, whereas BulkAPIResponse → getData() would return a list of Zoho CRM entity objects.

Other than data, these response wrapper objects have the following properties:

1. ResponseHeaders - remaining API counts for the present day/window and time elapsed for the present window reset.
2. ResponseInfo - any other information, if provided by the API, in addition to the actual data.
3. Array of EntityResponse(s) - status of individual entities in a bulk API. For example: an insert records API may partially fail because of a few records. This array gives the individual records’ creation status.

Exceptions

All unexpected behaviours like faulty API responses, SDK anomalies are handled by the PHP SDK and are thrown only as a single exception - ZCRMException. Hence, it is enough to catch this exception alone in the client app code.