How to update multiple records with API?

Question

For doing updates to multiple contacts using the API, is there a better way than this?

$res = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', $params);
foreach ($res['values'] as $contact) {
  civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', array('id' => $contact['id'], ... ))
}

For a large number of contacts, this is slow and eventually runs out of memory.

Answer 1

You can use chaining:

civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', array(
  'return' => 'id', // more efficient since you don't care about the get results
  ... other search params ...
  'api.Contact.create' => array('last_name' => 'Something'),
));

The 'id' will be set for you automatically by the chaining. For more about chaining see this post.

Also remember the 'gotcha' that unless you specify otherwise, this will only fetch & update 25 records.