{"id":18,"date":"2016-05-06T08:42:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T08:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/symbioticindia.in\/docu\/?p=18"},"modified":"2016-05-06T08:46:41","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T08:46:41","slug":"sugarcrm-integration-with-custom-vb6-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/symbioticindia.in\/docu\/2016\/05\/06\/sugarcrm-integration-with-custom-vb6-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"SugarCRM integration with custom VB6 applications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Introduction<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here we are with another article about SugarCRM integration with various languages\/platforms. This time we’ll discuss interacting with SugarCRM from VB6.
\nLots of developers and software houses have decided not to migrate their code from VB6 to VB.NET for various reasons, and I’m constantly being asked for mentoring and consulting by software houses needing integration between their legacy VB6 applications and SugarCRM.
\nThere are several ways to cope with SOAP in VB6, MS Soap Toolkit being one the best known and used, even if deprecated by Microsoft. We’ll be using another tool, PocketSoap<\/a> , which in my opinion is one of the most complete and easy to use.
\nPocketSoap is , as stated on its site: “an Open Source [MPL<\/a>] SOAP client COM component for the Windows family<\/em>“. We’ll use it to automatically build all the classes we need to interact with our SugarCRM installation.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Building our Proxy classes<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
Easy task, as all the hard work will be done by PocketSoap. Let’s launch the program “PocketSOAP Wsdl Wizard”. All it needs is the URL for the WSDL exposed by SugarCRM.
\nJust for the lazy people, here is the definition of wsdl taken from Wikipedia<\/a>:
\n“The Web Services Description Language<\/strong> (WSDL, pronounced ‘wiz-d\u0259l’ or spelled out, ‘W-S-D-L’) is an XML<\/a>-based language that provides a model for describing Web services<\/a>.”
\nBasically, a wsdl file formally describes the methods(operations) exposed by a web service and all the data types used.\u00a0 Using it, pocketsoap wsdl wizard is able to translate the calls to these methods to proper VB code.
\nNow, this is more or less what we’ll input in the first form of the wizard(“yourhost” being the IP of your SugarCRM installation):<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n
\"PocketSoap<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Make sure the directory you indicate exists.
\nAfter clicking “Next”, if everything is correct, we’ll be shown the services found by the wizard:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"PocketSoap<\/div>\n


\nAgain, let’s click “Next” and we’ll be shown the list of operations (that is methods) available.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"PocketSoap<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Make sure they are all selected, and click “Next” once again.
\nAt this point, in the previously selected directory, we’ll find\u00a0 an “ActiveX DLL” VB6 project containing all the classes we need. The generator will automatically add PocketSoap Type Library to the list of references of our project.
\nNow it’s time to use the generated code to connect to SugarCRM.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let’s login<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let’s create a VB project(a simple exe project will be just fine) and add our previously generated ActiveX DLL as reference.
\nThe first lines of code we need are:<\/p>\n

Dim<\/span> soap As<\/span> sugarsoapPortType
\nSet<\/span> soap =<\/span> New<\/span> sugarsoapPortType<\/p>\n

to instantiate the proxy class we’ll use to call the various operations.
\nThe first call we’ll do is\u00a0 “login”, to obtain a session id required by most other calls.
\n“login” requires as parameters a “userauth” type and a custom application name. “userauth” is composed of: a username, an md5 encoded password and a version string. Here is the code:<\/p>\n

Dim<\/span> user As<\/span> userauth
\nDim<\/span> loginresult As<\/span> setentryresult<\/p>\n

Set<\/span> user =<\/span> New<\/span> userauth<\/p>\n

user.<\/span>username =<\/span> “<\/span>admin<\/span>“<\/span>
\nuser.<\/span>password =<\/span> “<\/span>526ee3641d541a646b4adff94e97dc8d<\/span>“<\/span>
\nuser.<\/span>version =<\/span> “<\/span>1.0<\/span>“<\/span>
\nSet<\/span> loginresult =<\/span> soap.<\/span>login(user, “<\/span>test<\/span>“<\/span>)
\nIf<\/span> loginresult.<\/span>Error<\/span>.<\/span>Number <<\/span>><\/span> 0<\/span> Then<\/span>
\nMsgBox<\/span> loginresult.<\/span>Error<\/span>.<\/span>Description +<\/span> “<\/span> –<\/span> “<\/span> +<\/span> loginresult.<\/span>Error<\/span>.<\/span>Description
\nElse<\/span>
\nMsgBox<\/span> loginresult.<\/span>id
\nEnd<\/span> If<\/span><\/p>\n

“setentryresult” is the data type we get back from the call. It will contain an error object(with number,name and description properties), and an “id” string.
\nIf the login succeeds, “loginresult.Error.Number” wil be “0” and “loginresult.id” will contain a valid session id we’ll use later.
\nTo get the md5 hash of the password, there are plenty of online services, like this<\/a> . For example the md5 you see in the code corresponds to the word “adminpassword”.
\n“user.version” seems not to be relevant,and the second parameter of the “soap.login” call (“test” in this case) is just a custom name for your application.
\nNow that we have a valid session id , we can call more interesting methods exposed by SugarCRM Soap interface.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Getting data from SugarCRM<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We’ll query SugarCRM’s “Contact” module to get some data. The method involved is “get_entry_list” and the parameters it expects are:
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n