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How I start my Infusionsoft project code

In the last Extending Infusionsoft webinar, I mentioned that I have a boilerplate of code that I use every time I start a new php file for a PHP project.

In the post-webinar survey, many of you mentioned that you would like a copy of that boilerplate. Ask and you shall receive …

Here is copy of the code and a line-by-line explanation so you can use it as the starting point for your own project scripts …

<?php 

echo "Hello World! <br/>"; 

// Connect to Infusionsoft

//  This is the "loud" way

require_once("isdk.php");

$app = new iSDK;

if ($app->cfgCon("connectionName")) { 
	echo "Connected...";
 }else {
	echo "Not Connected...";
}    


// Connect to Infusionsoft the "quiet" way

// require_once("isdk.php");  
// $app = new iSDK;
// $app->cfgCon("connectionName");

// Current date in Infusionsoft-friendly format

echo $currentDate = date("YmdTH:i:s") . "<br/>";

So let’s start at the very most basic level … to designate what follows as PHP, we use the following …

<?php

The next line is the cliché line …

echo "Hello World! <br/>";

This line prints the phrase “Hello World!” on your screen. This comes before the connection to Infusionsoft and just tells me that I have reached a functioning PHP page. Notice that because I am working in PHP, I have to place the HTML I want rendered (Hello World! <br/>) in quotes and end with a semi-colon.

Next comes our connection to Infusionsoft. Notice that lines 7 – 17 are what I call the “loud way.” Lines 20 – 24 are the “quiet way.”

What I mean by the loud way is that it has ECHO statements in it to reassure me the connection to Infusionsoft is working correctly. When putting the final touches on your code, you may want to replace the loud way with the quiet way. Both make the same connection.
How to connect to the Infusionsoft API
Let’s go through each line of code so you understand what it does …

require_once("isdk.php");

This line says, to be able to execute the script in this file, we need to access an external file called isdk.php. As written, this assumes isdk.php is in the same folder as your script. If it isn’t, you will need to change this to the appropriate path.

$app = new iSDK;

This line is one of those things that until you really get into PHP, you just need to do without really understanding. The short version is that iSDK is a class and by saying “new iSDK” we instantiate that class and then assign it to a variable named $app.

See? I told you … don’t worry about it. Just know it has to be there.

But while we are on the subject, I do want to say a word about the variable $app. We can name this variable anything we want … $pony, $dog, $pie, $wheeee … it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that once you name it something, it has to be consistent.

I name it $app for the very simple reason that that is what it is in all the Infusionsoft documentation. That way, when I copy and paste a code sample from the documentation, I don’t accidentally end up with an error because my variables don’t match.

if ($app->cfgCon("connectionName")) { 
	echo "Connected...";
 }else {
	echo "Not Connected...";
}

This is an IF statement. It takes the form of IF this is true, do this, ELSE do this other thing. “This” is between the first set of brackets. “This other thing” is between the second set of brackets.

So, let’s look at the statement that needs to evaluate to TRUE …

$app->cfgCon("connectionName")

This is what we call an API call. It is the first one in a script and it establishes a new connection between your script and Infusionsoft application using the information provided in a different file called conn.cfg.php.

If it connects successfully, the variable $app will evaluate to TRUE because cfgCon has a data type of boolean, meaning it returns either TRUE or FALSE.

From the API documentation:

connectionName - this is the connection name from your conn.cfg.php file 

//Below is what the entry your conn.cfg.php file looks like: 

 $connInfo =  array('connectionName:applicationName:i:insertYourApiKeyHere: You can place a note here');

If we look at my conn.cfg file, you will see that you can put more than one application in your config file and then just call the correct one using the connection name.
conn.cfg
In my case, I just left the connection name for the app, hff89622, as connectionName. That is why on line 12, it says connectionName. However, if I wanted to connect to dfy90994 instead, line 12 would read like this:

$app->cfgCon("sandbox")

As I said before, the “quiet way” just removes the IF Statement and is commented out in the version above. 

echo $currentDate = date("YmdTH:i:s") . "<br/>";

The last thing I put in my boilerplate is an Infusionsoft-friendly timestamp. The core of this statement uses the PHP date() function which formats a timestamp according to the parameters it is given.

In this case, the format parameters are YmdTH:i:s, which is the format required by Infusionsoft. The rest of the statement assigns the result to a variable, $currentDate, so it can be ECHOed and appends an HTML line break at the end so that whatever comes after the date will be on the next line.

You may wonder why I include this DateTimestamp in my boilerplate? There are a couple of reasons: 1) For whatever reason, I work with dates A LOT! This way I don’t have to keep looking up the Infusionsoft format; and 2) when I am testing my scripts, I usually call them in a browser first.

Given my “dangit” method of writing code, I do a lot of changing then refreshing, changing then refreshing. Having that date/time there reassures me the page is reloading even when nothing else changes. You can see an example of the format and time changing with each refresh below.

timestamp

#4 – Trigger an action when an email is opened

This screencast addresses a question in the Infusionsoft forums asking if it is possible to perform an action, like adding a tag, when someone opens an Infusionsoft email. Although not perfect, the video gives you a solution. The steps are:

1. In your email template, put an <img> tag in an html snippet and instead of using an image file as the src, use a script.
2. The script should do two things: perform any required actions you want as a result of the email being “opened”, e.g. applying a tag; and serve an invisible 1 pixel image to the email template.

The concept of an email open is pretty flawed. Accordingly, this method has many limitations. The biggest one is that it really only works for broadcast emails, not individual emails.

There is a non-API way to do this (credit: Tyler Garns), that replaces the script URL with a link to an automation link. My preference is a script, mainly because I have more control, since the execution occurs outside of Infusionsoft.

That is, however, a personal preference.

Infusionsoft obviously tracks opens in the contact record. So the only reason you would do this would be to trigger some action. So I am curious, what would be a business use case for being able to apply a tag or some other action? How would you use this?

#3 – How to roll your own Infusionsoft field timer

In this screencast, we present a real life Infusionsoft API case study. I needed to send a text message reminding attendees webinar attendees one hour before the webinar.

Unfortunately, the field timer, in the Infusionsoft Campaign Builder, does not have an option for one hour before. I could only get as close as one day before and that was not sufficient.

The recipe called for the following ingredients:

1 tablespoon Infusionsoft Campaign Builder
3 cups MySQL database
1 oz. Infusionsoft API
1/2 cup cron
1 teaspoon cURL
a dash of PlusThis

This video gives an overview of the solution I created and how easy it was to find the various code samples I needed on the Internet. The key point is that when you know what you need – in this case the missing ingredient was cURL – even though you may have never written an http post in cURL before, you can just go to the Internet, find a code sample that is close and modify according to taste.

I will go in depth on how to connect to, store and retrieve data from a mySQL database, cURL and cron in follow-up videos. These are the key ingredients. With these in the cupboard, if you can dream it, you can do it.

It has never been easier for an amateur API chef to cook up some pretty impressive dishes.

What you can do with the Infusionsoft API?

VIDEO SUMMARY

With just a little bit of knowledge and some code snippets, you can do a lot with API, even as a very, very beginner. Here are some things I use the API for all the time:

  • Putting today’s date in custom fields, like date of first purchase or last order
  • Counters that increment when contact does something, like views a video or visits your site
  • Data manipulation, like properly capitalizing first name or adding a tag
  • Query data for custom reports, to write to an external database or display on a website
  • Assign a contact as it comes into the database to an email split test group
  • Order form or thank-you page redirects … send to a specific page based on form input
  • Change opportunity stage based on web form input
  • Create expiring links in campaign emails
  • Upload files to the contact’s file box from a web form
  • Clone an opportunity, which you cannot do without the API

This is just a small sample of the things you can do with the API. With the API, I like to say, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Each of these is fairly simple to do, even for a beginner, using the code building blocks in the SDK. Once you master easier things like these, you can begin linking or stringing the SDK building blocks together to solve ever bigger task or problems.

If you are like me, you will very quickly begin to wonder how you did anything in Infusionsoft without the API. It is that powerful.

How to get started with the Infusionsoft API

VIDEO SUMMARY

How does someone who knows nothing about the API or programming get started? The answer is pretty simple. Just start!

To get going, you will need a couple of very basic things:

  • The Infusionsoft API Key, which you will find in your application settings.
  • A free text editor. You can use Wordpad or TextEdit when you are first starting out. Smultron is another good free one for Mac. Later on, if you want to get fancier, you can buy a full featured editor.
  • A free FTP Client, which you probably have already if you’re working on websites. FileZilla is great because it’s free on both Mac and Windows.
  • FTP Access to a server.

Next, start playing with the sample code provided in the API documentation. If you have attended one of our “Introduction to the Infusionsoft API” webinars, you received our Infusionsoft API Setup Guide.

That guide shows you how to set up a script that tests your connection to the API. Use that script as a starting point. You can begin to drop the code snippets from the API documentation into that script to experiment and learn.

image10

One of the concerns I hear a lot concerning learning the API is you may be worried you will “break” something. Sandbox accounts are free from Infusionsoft. My recommendation would be to sign up for one of these accounts to do your testing and experimenting. Once you are comfortable with your code, then you can start working on live data.

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