SugarCRM Logic Hook: Proper Casing Fields

Sorry for my absence. Been meaning to write, but been caught up with other cool things.  Anyway, wanted to post a quick and easy one that many might find helpful. 

One of the biggest challenges with a database application such as SugarCRM is ensuring that data is entered in a uniform manner by its various users. The use of drop down and multi-select fields helps address this challenge quite well, but said field types cannot be used in all places. 

A good example of where they cannot be used is the Last Name field on a Contact entry. However, at the same time, it would be nice to be able to enforce some uniformity in the field's values, for example, ensure that names are being entered in proper case.  

This need provides us with a great opportunity to once again highlight the power of logic hooks. In our example, the uniformity we want to introduce is the proper casing of the text entered into the Last Name field. Thus, values that are typed in as "doe" are automatically corrected and saved to the database as "Doe."

A logic hook is the perfect solution as it is transparent to the user and easily extended to support other fields.

Lets take a look at how we can accomplish the above...

First of all, lets begin by creating our logic hook definition file.  This file is always named logic_hooks.php and for our example, will be stored in custom/modules/Contacts

The contents of logic_hooks.php are as follows:

<?php

$hook_version = 1;

$hook_array = Array();
$hook_array['before_save'][] = Array(1, 'ProperTest', 'custom/modules/Contacts/proper_test.php', 'ProperText', 'convertToProper');

?>

Next we need to create the file that will contain the code that actually does the work of converting the field's value to proper case.  That file will be named proper_test.php and also resides in the custom/modules/Contacts folder.

proper_test.php will contain the following:

<?php

/*************************************
Project: Sample Hook to Proper Case a Field's Value
Original Dev: Angel Magaña, February 2010
cheleguanaco[at]gmail.com

Desc: Logic Hook Code for Proper Case Update 

The contents of this file are governed by the GNU General Public License (GPL).
A copy of said license is available here: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
This code is provided AS IS and WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

*************************************/

class ProperText {

 function convertToProper(&$bean, $event, $arguments) 
 {
  $bean->last_name = ucwords($bean->last_name);
 }

}

?>

To test, enter a new contact and type a value in the Last Name field that is not proper cased, then save the contact.  Note that when saved, the contact's last name value is automatically adjusted.

That's all it takes!