Web API Reference (Legacy)

This is the reference guide for the "legacy" API. While the legacy API will still remain in the app, and bugs affecting it can/will still be fixed, no new features will be developed for it. For up-to-date information on X2Engine's REST API, see the REST API Reference page.

X2Engine features a HTTP-based API for inserting, updating, querying and deleting records via ApiController, which (with few exceptions) responds in JSON format. The API can perform these operations with any subclass of X2Model. URLs (after the domain name and relative path to the document root) for web requests to the API begin with index.php/api/.

Authenticating

In most calls to the API, authentication is required in the form of GET or POST parameters user and userKey, which are the username and API key (respectively) of a user in the CRM. In versions earlier than 2.9.1, these parameters are named authUser and authPassword, and authPassword is the password hash.

Getting and Setting API Keys

A user's API key can be set (or looked up) by the administrator, by (in the Users module) visiting the Update page for the given user.

CRUD (Create, Read, Update & Delete) API Methods

The following API actions can be used with any subclass of X2Model (i.e. Contacts, Accounts, Opportunity, etc.) In the following reference table, the model class to be used for display purposes is Contacts, and the id (primary key) value is 5.

Use	Method	URL	Authentication	Request type/data expected	Code	Response properties
Create a new record	actionCreate()	/create/model/Contacts	With post data	POST; authentication & model attributes together in a flat list as URL-encoded form data	200 Record successfully inserted 500 Model failed validation	error true if and only if the new record was created successfully model attributes of the model as key-value pairs (indexed by attribute name) modelErrors validation errors for each attribute, if applicable
Search for the first record matching one or more fields	actionLookup()	/lookup/model/Contacts	With post data	POST; Same as with the create action	200 found record 404 no record found	If successful: attributes of the model as a flat key-value pair list (indexed by attribute name). Otherwise: error boolean / true message "No item found with specified attributes."
Retrieve a record by primary key	actionView()	/view/Contacts/id/5	As additional query parameters appended to the URL	GET	200 Record found with specified primary key 400 The primary key is not included properly or specified 404 No record found	Attributes of the model as a flat list indexed by attribute name, if successful. Otherwise: error boolean / true, indicating an error message A string containing an explanation of what went wrong
Update a preexisting record	actionUpdate()	/update/model/Contacts/id/5	With post data	POST; same as with create method	200 Record successfully updated 404 Record to be updated does not exist 400 Primary key is missing from query parameters 500 Model failed validation during update	Same as with create action
Delete a record	actionDelete()	/delete/model/Contacts/id/5	With post data	POST; authentication data	200 Record successfully deleted 404 Record to be deleted does not exist 400 Primary key is missing from query parameters 500 Record could not be deleted	message "1" if successful; else, an error message error boolean / true if and only if successful

Attribute Input Format

The input to the API will be processed in the same way that it is within the application, that is to say, using the method X2Model.setX2Fields(). In particular, the method Fields.parseValue() is used for processing and transforming the data before it is recorded in the database. The case statement in that method shows how each type of field is processed (see X2Model and Dynamic Fields for more information on field types and how fields are dynamically managed)

Miscellaneous API actions

Managing relationships betweeen records

One can create, get lists of and delete relationships between records in X2Engine by using the actionRelationship() method. Of all the API methods, this is one of the most recently-created; creation, retrieval and deletion of relationships all happen through the same URL: index.php/api/relationship/model/Contacts (for relating to models of class Contacts). This is an effort to shift in the direction of an ultimately more REST-ful and clean API. The following table describes its uses and responses:

Use	Request type/data expected	Codes	Response
Create a relationship	POST with url-encoded form data: secondType (model class of target), firstId (id of the first model), and secondId (id of the target model), in addition to authentication parameters.	200 The relationship was created successfully or already exists 400 The relationship failed validation (most likely because the target model records do not exist) 500 Failed to insert relationship record for some other reason, i.e. database error	error false/true based on whether the relation was inserted message String; message telling whether the relationship exists or not, or if there was an error
Get relationships between two models	GET, with query parameters same as those in creating relationships, and authentication. However, parameters may be omitted to make the query more inclusive, i.e. omitting secondId but setting firstId to 5, model to "Accounts" and secondType to "Contacts" will show all relationships between the Account record with id=5 and contact records.	200 Relationships exist 404 No relationships found	A list (JSON-encoded, of course) of relationship records (each itself an attribute -> value pair list)
Delete a relationship	DELETE, with everything defined in the query parameters. Behavior is similar to the GET method; in fact, it can delete multiple relationships at the same time, similarly omitting parameters to make the query more inclusive.	200 Relationship(s) successfully deleted 404 No relationships found were deleted 500 Some relationship(s) could not be deleted due to a database error	message A string status message for the request error boolean (true on success, false on failure)

Tagging Records

Child classes of X2Model can be tagged, and tagging can be done through the API action actionTags() at the URL index.php/api/tags/model/Contacts/id/5 (to add tags to contact #5, for instance). The following describes how to use the action:

Use	Request type/data expected	Codes	Response
Tag a model	POST with url-encoded form data: tag (if adding one tag) or tags (if adding multiple tags at once, and in this case, it must be a JSON-encoded list), in addition to authentication parameters.	200 Tags applied 400 Required parameter is missing, or invalid model 404 Model not found 500 Failed to add tags for some reason, i.e. database error	error false/true based on whether the tags were successfully inserted message String; status message
Get tags on a model	GET, with the model class and id specified in the query parameters as when updating a model (see the previous section, on CRUD methods).	200 Almost every response barring authentication failure 400 Invalid model is specified 404 Model not found	A JSON-encoded list of tags
Delete one or more tags	DELETE, with everything defined in the query parameters. The tags may be a url-encoded list, or a string (single tag to delete)	200 Tag(s) removed 400 Parameter missing 404 No tags were deleted; the model did not have specified tags (or, model not found)	message A string status message for the request error boolean (true on success, false on failure)

Example: add tag "customer" to the contact with ID equal to 71:

• Make the request to index.php/api/tags/model/Contacts/id/71
• Request type POST
• Send with post data "user","userKey" (authentication parameters) and "tag" set to "customer".

Or, with two tags, "customer" and "active":

• Request to index.php/api/tags/model/Contacts/id/71
• Request type POST
• Post data includes the usual authentication parameters, and "tags", which should be the JSON-encoded list of tags:

  ["customer","active"]
  

Inbound VoIP call notifications

PBX systems that are connected to the internet, especially if they are based on Asterisk, will have the ability to run scripts within their call flow. This opens the possibility of integrating phone systems with X2Engine. The action api/voip, which does not require authentication, is the most basic way of doing so where all that is necessary is to notify sales reps when a contact is calling. This gives the rep a window of few seconds (depending on the dialplan, and if the caller is typing in someone's extension directly) to get ready to receive the call when it finally reaches them. It creates notifications for all users (if assigned to "Anyone"), an activity feed event, and if the contact is assigned to someone, it opens a new window with the record on screen in that rep's web browser.

To use it, make a GET request to index.php/api/voip/data/{phone number}, where {phone number} is the caller ID (without spaces, parentheses or dashes) calling in. Note, it may yield better results if the country code is ommitted; the search for contacts is based on serialized phone numbers but also returns the first partial match. So, as long as the data parameter is a unique part of a phone number, it won't match the incorrect contact record.

More information on this method: actionVoip().

Get a list of all users in the app

The method actionListUsers() (accessed via GET at /api/listUsers) requires authentication (as query parameters) and will return with HTTP code 403 if the user used for authenticating does not have permission to the UsersIndex RBAC action. It returns, upon success, a JSON-encoded list of users, each user a list of attribute name to attribute value key/value pairs (according to the columns of the x2_users table. The password and userKey fields, however, are ommitted from the attributes of all users.

Security Considerations

It is in general considered a best practice to securely encrypt web traffic to your web server with HTTP over SSL(a.k.a Transport Layer Security) a method of connecting to a remote network host that encrypts traffic on any given network protocol that uses it. (HTTPS). Without this, API authentication credentials will be sent directly to the server in plain text, and thus vulnerable to exposure via man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks and packet sniffing. Note, however, that if HTTPS is not used on the server, normal web-browser authentication would also be vulnerable to this kind of attack anyway, because the session ID stored in the cookie can similarly be stolen and used to access the system as any given user.

If SSL(a.k.a Transport Layer Security) a method of connecting to a remote network host that encrypts traffic on any given network protocol that uses it.-protected HTTP is not an option due to the cost, it is thus recommended that you keep all of your API requests within the same server or intranet and/or behind a firewall, as that would mean that both the origin and target of the API web request would be within a protected network area, and thus would more difficult to access.