Basic API Develpment (ZOHO)

[phaedrusGhost]

Hi all,

I have just started using Zoho for a client of mine and so far I really like the way it handles CRM content. I now need to implement a CRM API to grab a single form field from a PHPList entry form and get it into the CRM.

I would like to accomplish two things here:

1. Grab single form field data (email) and get it into Zoho CRM
2. Make sure I can use a 2nd action to also get the same entry to the local database.

Pretty sure I need AJAX for the second part right?

I am looking at https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/api/insertrecords.html

but am not really sure where to start this. Where can I get a step by step or some basic information to do exactly what I need to do?

I see the request URL data https://crm.zoho.com/crm/private/xml/Leads/insertRecords?authtoken=Auth Token&scope=crmapi&xmlData=Your XML Data

What is "Your XML Data" supposed to be? Is this an XML sheet that I am supposed to create and store somewhere or is this automatically created when the form is submitted? I tend to overthink sometimes so any push in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

I have never developed anything in regards to API's but would like to as I am fairly experienced in PHP, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascripting.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated...

[pritaeas]

You have to provide that XML in that format, so Zoho can parse and insert it's data as a record into it's CRM.

[phaedrusGhost]

Hi pritaeas and thank you for the reply.

Excuse my ignorance but, how exactly would I "provide that in XML in that format"?

I have my form:

<div class="newsletter_form">

<form name="subscribeform" method="post" action="http://easyexcel.info/lists/?p=subscribe"> 
  <table style="margin-bottom: 0px;" border="0">
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td>
          <div class="labelTitles">Email</div>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td class="attributeinput"><input name="email" class="newsletter_field disabled_txt" value="Enter your email" size="20" type="text" />
          addFieldToCheck("email","Email");
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>
            <br /> Excel:<input name="list[1]" value="signup" checked="checked" type="checkbox" />  Word:<input name="list[4]" value="signup" checked="checked" type="checkbox" />  Specials:<input name="list[5]" value="signup" checked="checked" type="checkbox" />
        </td>
        <td>
          <div class="submit_butn">
            <div style="display: none;"><input name="VerificationCodeX" size="20" type="text" /></div>
            <input class="readmore" style="float: right;" src="http://easyexcel.info/templates/simple-business/images/subscribe.png" alt="SUBMIT!" name="subscribe" value="Subscribe" border="0" height="27" type="image" width="75" />
          </div>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
</form>

</div>

This also needs to get entered into the DB for PHPlist to send newsletters to the new subscriber. So then how would I go about the XML formatting part and getting it into the CRM? Again, this is a first for me and would really like to learn this.

I very much appreciate any assistance and apologies for the 4 year old questioning.

[pritaeas]

Have a look at SimpleXML or DOMDocument to create an XML.