Kaizen #94 - PHP SDK V4 - Configuration and Initialization

Hello and welcome to another Kaizen week!

In previous Kaizen posts, we have covered in detail how to configure and initialize PHP SDKs for Zoho CRM v2.1 APIs. We have since released SDKs for v4 and v5 APIs. However, starting from v4, there are some changes in the configuration and initialization process.  In this post, we will discuss you how to configure and initialize PHP SDK v4 and v5.

The PHP Software Development Kit (SDK) simplifies the integration of client PHP applications with Zoho CRM. Acting as a wrapper for the REST APIs, it streamlines the usage of Zoho CRM services. 

Before proceeding with the configuration, make that your client application meets the prerequisites. This includes having PHP 7 or above installed, along with the cURL extension, which is necessary for connecting and communicating with Zoho CRM APIs.

I. Register your application with Zoho CRM

Registering your application with Zoho CRM is a mandatory step in order to authenticate and authorize API calls using the OAuth2.0 standards.

1. Go to https://api-console.zoho.com
   
2. Click on Get Started or +ADD CLIENT.
   
3. Choose the Client Type as Self-Client or Server based Applications depending on your application.
4. Fill in the necessary details and click CREATE. Once you successfully register your self-client, you will receive a Client ID and Client Secret.
   

II. Installing the PHP SDK 

1. If not already installed, follow the instructions provided at the corresponding link to install Composer.
   
   

   Mac/Linux	curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php (terminal command)  https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#installation-linux-unix-osx
   Windows	https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#installation-windows

   
   
2. Install PHP-SDK using Composer
   
1. Navigate to the workspace of your client app.
   
2. Run the following command in the workspace. Upon successful installation, the system will create a package named vendor in the workspace of your client app. 

   composer require zohocrm/php-sdk-4.0 (for v4 APIs)  composer require zohocrm/php-sdk-5.0 (for v5 APIs)

3. To use the SDK in your project, add the following line in your project PHP files. This loads and includes our PHP-SDK library in your project. If you skip this step, you will get a fatal error in response due to the missing libraries.
   

   require 'vendor/autoload.php';

   
   

III. Token Persistence

Token persistence refers to storing and utilizing authentication tokens provided by Zoho, enabling the SDK to refresh the access tokens without user intervention. The SDK offers three types of persistence - File, DB, and Custom - with file persistence being the default method. 

The persistence is achieved by writing an implementation of the inbuilt TokenStore interface, which has the following callback methods. 

Methods	Description
findToken(Token $token)	Invoked before firing a request to fetch the saved tokens. This method returns an implementation of Token interface object for the library to process it.
saveToken(Token $token)	Invoked after fetching access and refresh tokens from Zoho. This method saves the token details.
deleteToken($id)	This method is used to delete the given token details.
getTokens()	The method is used to retrieve all the stored tokens.
deleteTokens()	The method to delete all the stored tokens.
findTokenById($id)	This method is used to retrieve the user token details based on the unique ID.

Here, $token is an instance of the Token interface.

Token Persistence using a Database

In Database persistence, tokens are stored and retrieved from a database (e.g., MySQL).

Create a table in your database with the following required columns. For example, if you want to persist your tokens in a table named token in database named zoho, use this:

CREATE DATABASE zoho; // use this to create database named zoho // use this to create a table named token, with the following necessary columns CREATE TABLE token (    id varchar(10) NOT NULL,   user_name varchar(255) NOT NULL,   client_id varchar(255),   client_secret varchar(255),   refresh_token varchar(255),   access_token varchar(255),   grant_token varchar(255),   expiry_time varchar(20),   redirect_url varchar(255),   primary key (id) );

Note that the columns are different for API v2.1. Please refer to this post for more details. . 

File Persistence

File Persistence allows storing and retrieving the authentication tokens from the given file path. The file contains id, user_name, client_id, client_secret, refresh_token, access_token, grant_token, expiry_time and redirect_url. 

Custom Persistence

Custom Persistence refers to a technique where users can create their own method of storing and retrieving authentication tokens. To use this method, users need to implement the TokenStore interface and override its methods according to their own logic.

IV. Configuration

The configuration step involves setting up various details in the SDK, such as user authentication, token persistence, logging, API call timeout settings, and more. The following keys are defined during this process:

1. environment (mandatory): The API environment which decides the domain and the URL to make API calls, in Domain::Environment pattern.
   Domains : USDataCenter, EUDataCenter, INDataCenter, CNDataCenter, AUDataCenter
   Environments : PRODUCTION(), DEVELOPER(), SANDBOX()
2. Token (mandatory): This key contains the user token details. Create an instance of OAuthToken with the information that you get after registering your Zoho client.  Depending on the available tokens, you can select one of the following flows:
   
   Note : You need to generate the tokens (grant/access/refresh) beforehand to use them in the respective flows.
   
   a) grantToken flow - You should use the grant Token for configuration.
   

   $token = (new OAuthBuilder())   ->clientId("clientId")   ->clientSecret("clientSecret")   ->userSignature($user) //optional   ->grantToken("grantToken")   ->redirectURL("redirectURL") //optional   ->build();

   
   
   b) refreshToken flow - Utilize the refresh token in this flow.
   

   $token = (new OAuthBuilder())   ->clientId("clientId")   ->clientSecret("clientSecret") ->userSignature($user) //optional   ->refreshToken("refreshToken")   ->build();

   
   
   c) accessToken flow - You can use the access token to configure in this flow. Please note that the token will not be persisted in this case, and the access token will be directly used to make the API calls.
   

   $token = (new OAuthBuilder())    ->userSignature($user) //optional    ->accessToken("accessToken")    ->build();

   
   
   d) id flow - You can use the id from the persisted token file/DB to make API calls. The id is a unique system generated value for each token details entry in the file/DB.
   

   $token = (new OAuthBuilder())    ->id("id")    ->build();

   
   
3. logger (optional) : Create an instance of Logger Class to log exception and API information. You can set the level you want to log (FATAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, DEBUG, TRACE, ALL, OFF), and also configure the file path and file name for the log file. The default level is OFF.
   
   
   

   $logger = (new LogBuilder())   ->level(Levels::INFO)   ->filePath("/Documents/php_sdk_log.log")   ->build();

   
   
4. store (optional) : Configure your token persistence using this method. If this is skipped, the SDK creates the sdk_tokens.txt in the current working directory to persist the tokens by default. For more details, refer here.
5. SDKConfig (optional) : The additional SDK configurations are taken care of with this method. 
   

   Configuration Key	Description
   autoRefreshFields  Default Value : False	A boolean configuration key to enable or disable automatic refreshing of module fields in the background. If set to true, fields are refreshed every hour, and if set to false, fields must be manually refreshed or deleted.
   pickListValidation  Default Value : True	This field enables or disables pick list validation. If enabled, user input for pick list fields is validated, and if the value does not exist in the pick list, the SDK throws an error. If disabled, the input is not validated and the API call is made.
   enableSSLVerification  Default Value : True	A boolean field to enable or disable curl certificate verification. If set to true, the SDK verifies the authenticity of certificate. If set to false, the SDK skips the verification.
   connectionTimeout  Default Value : 0	The maximum time (in seconds) to wait while trying to connect. Use 0 to wait indefinitely.
   timeout  Default Value : 0	The maximum time (in seconds) to allow cURL functions to execute. Use 0 to wait indefinitely.

   
   
6. requestProxy (optional) : Contains the proxy properties of the user. Configure this only if you're using a proxy server to make the API calls.
   

   $requestProxy = (new ProxyBuilder())  ->host("proxyHost")  ->port("proxyPort")  ->user("proxyUser")  ->password("password")  ->build();

   
   
7. resourcePath (optional) : Configure the absolute directory path to store user specific files containing module fields information. If skipped, the files will be stored in the project directory itself.

V. Initilization

After completing the configuration, you can proceed with initializing the SDK, and begin making API requests.

Here is a sample code to initialize the SDK, using refresh token flow and DB Persistence. 

<?php   use com\zoho\api\authenticator\OAuthBuilder;   use com\zoho\api\authenticator\store\DBBuilder;   use com\zoho\crm\api\InitializeBuilder;   use com\zoho\crm\api\UserSignature;   use com\zoho\crm\api\dc\USDataCenter;   use com\zoho\api\logger\LogBuilder;   use com\zoho\api\logger\Levels;   use com\zoho\crm\api\SDKConfigBuilder;   use com\zoho\crm\api\ProxyBuilder;   require_once "vendor/autoload.php";   class Initialize   {     public static function initializeSDK()     {       $user = new UserSignature("patricia@zoho.com");       $environment = USDataCenter::PRODUCTION();       $token = (new OAuthBuilder())         ->clientId("1000.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx")         ->clientSecret("554a9xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx") ->userSignature($user) //optional         ->refreshToken("1000.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx")          ->redirectURL("www.zoho.com") //optional         ->build();      $logger = (new LogBuilder())        ->level(Levels::INFO)        ->filePath("/Documents/php_sdk_log.log")        ->build();      $tokenstore = (new DBBuilder())        ->host("insert_your_hostname_here")        ->databaseName("insert_your_database_name_here")        ->userName("insert_your_db_username_here")        ->password("insert_your_db_password_here")        ->portNumber("insert_your_portnumber_here")        ->tableName("insert_your_table_name_here")        ->build();      $autoRefreshFields = false;      $pickListValidation = false;      $connectionTimeout = 2;      $timeout = 2;      $enableSSLVerification = false;      $configInstance = (new SDKConfigBuilder())        ->autoRefreshFields($autoRefreshFields)        ->pickListValidation($pickListValidation)        ->sslVerification($enableSSLVerification)        ->connectionTimeout($connectionTimeout)        ->timeout($timeout)        ->build();      $resourcePath = "/Documents/phpsdk-application";      $requestProxy = (new ProxyBuilder())        ->host("proxyHost")        ->port("proxyPort")        ->user("proxyUser")        ->password("password")        ->build();     (new InitializeBuilder())       ->environment($environment)       ->token($token)       ->store($tokenstore) //optional       ->SDKConfig($configInstance) //optional       ->resourcePath($resourcePath) //optional       ->logger($logger) //optional       ->requestProxy($requestProxy) //optional       ->initialize();    }  } Initialize::initializeSDK(); ?>

You are now set to use the PHP SDK and make API calls. 

If you have any queries, let us know the comments below, or send an email to support@zohocrm.com. We would love to hear from you!

Cheers!

• Topic Participants

• Anu Abraham

  

• Sticky Posts

• Kaizen #197: Frequently Asked Questions on GraphQL APIs

  🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Kaizen #198: Using Client Script for Custom Validation in Blueprint

  Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – 1 More to the Big Two-Oh-Oh! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Celebrating 200 posts of Kaizen! Share your ideas for the milestone post

  Hello Developers, We launched the Kaizen series in 2019 to share helpful content to support your Zoho CRM development journey. Staying true to its spirit—Kaizen Series: Continuous Improvement for Developer Experience—we've shared everything from FAQs

• Kaizen #193: Creating different fields in Zoho CRM through API

  🎊 Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone.

• Client Script | Update - Introducing Commands in Client Script!

  Have you ever wished you could trigger Client Script from contexts other than just the supported pages and events? Have you ever wanted to leverage the advantage of Client Script at your finger tip? Discover the power of Client Script - Commands! Commands

• Recent Topics

• equest to Disassociate Bigin from Zoho One and Migrate to Standalone (Upgrade to Bigin Premier – 3 Seats, Annual)

  Dear Zoho One Support Team, I’m writing to request your assistance to disassociate (remove) the Bigin application from our Zoho One organization while preserving all existing Bigin data. After the disconnection is successfully completed, we intend to

• SMTP email sending problem

  Hello, I've sent emails before, but you haven't responded. Please respond. My work is being disrupted. I can't send emails via SMTP. Initially, there were no problems, but now I'm constantly receiving 550 bounce errors. I can't use the service I paid

• billing

  hi, I am being billed $12/year, and I can't remember why. My User ID is 691273115 Thanks for your help, --Kitty Pearl

• How to add receipts

  How to add receipts

• Unable to enable tax checkboxes

  Hi Zoho Commerce Support, I'm writing to report an issue I'm having with the tax settings in my Zoho Commerce store. I've created several tax rates under Settings > Taxes, but all of them appear with the checkbox disabled. When I try to enable a checkbox,

• Zoho Commerce - Enable Company Name and Tax Number collection for B2B orders in Global Edition

  Please enable Company Name and Tax Details option on checkout settings in Zoho Commerce Global Edition. It is still important to collect Company Name and Tax Number for B2B sales in many countries. My business is based in Ireland (in the EU) and I have

• ZohoSign and ZohoBooks Integration/Workflow

  Hello All, We utilize ZohoSign for signatures on tax eFiles. We utilize Dynamic KBA. Additionally, we use ZohoBooks for invoicing for these services. Is there a way to accomplish the following: Send a copy of the Tax Return, Invoice and eFiles in one

• Manage monthly tasks with projectsf

  Hi All I run a finance and operations team where we need both teams to complete monthly tasks to ensure we hit our deadlines. Can Zoho projects be used for this. There many finance focused tools but we have Zoho one so want to explore Thanks Will

• Zoho Suite is very slow

  Since today Zoho is incredibly slow over all applications! What's going on?

• How can I track which zoho users are actively using Zoho CRM

  I have several licenses of Zoho CRM. We now need to add a new user. I could purchase a new license, but before I do, I would like to see if any of our existing users are not actively using the license assigned to them. How can I determine the activity

• Is anyone else having trouble saving a custom image in their email signature, or is it just me?

  When I try to save the image I get an error that says "Operation Failed" I opened a support ticket two weeks ago and received a response that it would be debugged, but it still isn’t working

• Combine and hide invoice lines

  In quickbooks we are able to create a invoice line that combines and hides invoices lines below. eg. Brochure design         $1000 (total of lines below, the client can see this line) Graphic Design           $600 (hidden but entered to reporting and

• Transaction Locking with the dynamic date

  Is it possible to dynamically update dates on transaction locking. We want to lock transaction x days from today

• Zoho Devops

  We have a Zoho one account which we have integrated with an SAS educational product, sold on a subscription model, using webhooks and API calls. We make some use of custom fields and cross module lookups and relationships. We utilize CRM, Books and billing

• Fuel up your sales with the Zoho SalesIQ + Bigin integration

  Hi everyone! We’re happy to bring you the all-new Zoho SalesIQ + Bigin integration. With this, every prospect from your website instantly becomes a contact in Bigin, complete with transcripts and follow-up tasks, so you never lose a lead again. Let's

• Introducing AI-powered Assessments & Zoho's native LLM, Zia

  We’ve shipped a cleaner, faster way to create assessments in Zoho Recruit. 🚀 Instead of manually building question banks or copying old templates, you can now generate ready-to-use assessments in just a few clicks, all tailored to the role you’re hiring

• Ability to Reset Visitor Fields During an Active Chat Flow

  Hello Zoho SalesIQ Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to propose a feature enhancement to Zoho SalesIQ regarding the management of visitor fields within Zobot flows. Use Case: Our bot asks the visitor to provide information about a 3rd person

• External ID in Zoho CRM

  Hello everyone! We know that Zoho CRM allows you to integrate third-party apps and manipulate data through APIs. While you integrate a third-party application, you may want to store the third-party reference IDs in Zoho CRM's records. To meet this need

• Some emails are not being delivered

  I have this problem where some of my mail just seems to disappear. When I send it, it appears as sent with no mention of any problem, but my recipient never gets it, not even in the Spam folder. Same for receiving, I have a secondary e-mail address, and

• New in Zoho Chat : Search for contacts, files, links & conversations with the all new powerful 'Smart Search' bar.

  With the newly revamped 'Smart Search' bar in Zoho Chat, we have made your search for contacts, chats, files and links super quick and easy using Search Quantifiers.   Search for a contact or specific conversations using quantifiers, such as, from: @user_name - to find chats or channel conversations received from a specific user. to: @user_name - to find chats or channel conversations sent to a specific user. in: #channel_name - to find a particular instance in a channel. in: #chat_name - to find

• Template modifiactions

  Hello, I am struggling with the templates in ZOHO Books. Especially with the placement of some items, like company address, ship to, bill to etc.  For example: One item I like from template X (placement of ship to and bill to next to each other in the

• Aggregating the First Value in the Group By of a dataset

  Hi I am trying to get the following Aggregate Formula to work in my chart, but cannot seem to get the right format. I have a series of data that I am running an include_groupby and want to SUM only a column in the first row of each group. So for example.

• Admin Control Over Profile Picture Visibility in Zoho One

  Hello Zoho Team, We hope you are doing well. Currently, as per Zoho’s design, each user can manage the visibility of their profile picture from their own Zoho Accounts page: accounts.zoho.com → Personal Information → Profile Picture → Profile Picture

• Track Zoho Campaign and Workflow sales impact

  I am attempting to measure the performance of our marketing workflows and campaigns by comparing the date each campaign was sent to a contact with the purchase date of the contact. For example, if Contact A was sent Email A on 9/1 and made a purchase

• Tables for Europe Datacenter customers?

  It's been over a year now for the launch of Zoho Tables - and still not available für EU DC customers. When will it be available?

• What is a line break code for zoho?

  Hi, I am archiving data by adding values from a single line field from one form to a multi-line field in another form. So I need a code/function that starts a new line on that multi-line field so it does not just keep adding it on the same line. Example, doing something like this means that it will be on a same line. archive.field1 = archive.field1 + input.Field1 I need a code so the input.Field1 can just start on the next line. Instead of "value 1, 2,3,4,5" It will be: "1 2 3 4 etc.".  something

• Automatic Project Owner change

  Is there a way to change Project Owner automatically once a specific Milestone in a project is marked as completed. Different Teams are working on projects in our Org, they have their own Milestones to complete and so we transfer the project from team

• Button to add product to cart

  Is there a way to have a button on a page, that when clicked, will add Qty 1 of a product to the cart?

• Problem with Submit Button Design

  I have made a template to apply to my forms and under the button controls, I have it set to "standard" and yet it's still filling the container. This is super frustrating and looks weird. Why do we not have full control over button size? How can I fix

• Zoho CRM- Authorize your Microsoft Teams account issue

  Hi, I tried to link Zoho CRM with Teams and I got the following message: Clicking "Authorize now" sent me to the following page, Microsoft tried to start a session but, after 3 seconds the page closed and nothing happened. I get the same message each

• Passing the CRM

  Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

• Is there a way to associate an email in ZOHO Main to a Vendor record in ZOHO CRM

  My situation is as below, I have a vendor in ZOHO CRM lets say "Vend A" and an associated contact, "Cont A" If Cont A sends me an email using the email I've registered in the contact record the standard OOTB email sync will work. But the vendor has some

• Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account.

  Hello, I'm trying to add bank charges to a customer payment, but I get the error message "Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account." I found this old thread, where it says that I need to "select a Bank account for the 'Deposit To' dropdown

• Kaizen #207 - Answering your Questions | Advanced Queries using COQL API

  Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kaizen week! As part of Kaizen #200 milestone, many of you shared topics you would like us to cover, and we have been addressing them one by one over the past few weeks. Today, we are picking up one of those requests

• Présentation de SecureForms dans Zoho Vault

  Soyons francs : demander à quelqu’un de transmettre un mot de passe ou des informations sensibles n’est jamais une tâche facile. On attend, on relance, parfois de nombreuses fois. Et quand l’information arrive, elle se retrouve souvent dispersée dans

• Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

  Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

• Granular Email Forwarding Controls in Zoho Mail (Admin Console and Zoho One)

  Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? At present, the Zoho Mail Admin Console allows administrators to configure email forwarding for an entire mailbox, forwarding all incoming emails to another address. This is helpful for delegation or backup purposes,

• Sales order & purchase order item links for item details

  This is fantastic for checking lots of things, I use it a lot. It would be great to see it extended to invoices & bills On another note, may as well throw in my favourite whinge ..... Wish you guys would get the PO receive differences sorted urgently,

• Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

  Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

• Kaizen #190 - Queries in Custom Related Lists

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss yet another interesting enhancement to Queries. As you all know, Queries allow you to dynamically retrieve data from CRM as well as third-party services directly within

• Next Page