Creating Custom Module Fields in SugarCRM over SOAP Interface

Question

Hi all, we're using SugarCRM as the back-end for a web application. We automatically generate Java client-side stub SOAP classes using Apache Axis, and using these classes we are able to login through Sugar, create new Contacts, change field values, etc. (All using the SOAP interface.)

We will be using a number of different SugarCRM instances, testing with different versions, etc. so we need a quick way to create the custom fields for our modules. (For example, adding a new "Company Name" field to the Contact module.)

Creating these custom fields in the Sugar web interface (Using Studio, Module Builder) then populating the values over SOAP has not caused any problems, but we need a way to create these custom fields over the SOAP interface, so that they can be automated. For example, if we spawn a new SugarCRM instance, we want to run a simple script or class to automatically create our pre-defined custom fields.

In a nutshell, is there any way to add custom fields to a Module in SugarCRM over SOAP? Or at the very least, an automated method of creating all of our defined custom fields?

Answer 1

I wonder if you could use Selenium to programmatically fill out the fields in Module Builder? One thing that might cause problems in the future though would be that any updates to Sugar/ModuleBuilder interface might cause the Selenium scripts to become broken.

Answer 2

Use a manifest file: http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki/index.php?title=Manifest.php

Answer 3

We ended up using the Studio/Module Building and "Exporting" our changes. It's a bit tedious to do this for every change of our custom SugarCRM modules, but it is very easy for our clients to use.

Answer 4

soap doesn't offer ability to create fields, but you can make a script to edit vardefs of a module and to start sugarcrm quick repair so db is synched with vardefs files and you will have fields created in some automation manner.