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Ever need to load in a Sugar bean but can’t remember if the directory name is the same as the bean name is the same as the php file containing the bean?  Don’t worry you’re not alone.  This was a design flaw that has propogated even into the latest versions of sugar.  But there’s an easier way.  Rather than requiring_once the full path of the php file housing the bean, use the following snippet:

$beanname = ‘Contact’;
require_once($GLOBALS['beanFiles'][$beanname]);
$focus = new $beanname;

Substitude beanname for whatever you want and bingo.  This will also help ensure that with future versions of sugar when they add the ability to sublcass and extend in beans you’re loading the correct version.

Need a json object to output json encoded data?  Use the following code sample, the json object is automiatcally included in when the application is started so no requires are needed:

$json = getJSONobj();
$out = $json->encode($ret, true);

@ob_end_clean();
ob_start();
echo $out;
ob_end_flush();

Some sugar related date functions:

Get the current date time stamp in a database agnostic fashion:

gmdate($GLOBALS['timedate']->get_db_date_time_format());

You’ll notice we use the gmdate function since all dates within sugar are stored in the gmt timezone.  The conversions to the user format and timezone are applied when the SugarBean retrieve function is executed.

To convert from db to display format use:

$display_now = $GLOBALS['timedate']->to_display_date_time($now);

Where $now is the db version of gmdate.

SugarCRM uses a notion of metadata files to provide two purposes:

1. Define relationships between beans
2. Create the necessary table structures used to manage this relationships.

All of the metadata files for the oob modules are stored in the root/metadata folder.  The files are ‘registered’ in the TableDictionary.php which is located in the modules directory.  If you need to add custom meta data files you can create them and add them to the custom/metadata directory.  You will probably need to create this directory yourself.  In order to register these new dictionary entries you can simply create a file and add them in here:

‘custom/application/Ext/TableDictionary/tabledictionary.ext.php’

This will ensure that your entries are all upgrade safe.

On ocassion it becomes necessary to query the database for whatever particular reason.  If you are extending a bean object then you already have a db object availabile to you from the instance variable $db.  So you could access the database object by referncing it like this:

$this->db->query(“Select * from something”);

If however you are extending other files and need access a database object the recommended approach is to make the following call:

$db = DBManagerFactory::getInstance();

This is a bit safer than just using the global db variable as the getInstance implements the singleton pattern and will always return a valid db object.  Unless of course your configuration file does not point to a valid database.