Updating Memo/Rich Text Editor Fields with the API

Question

I have in my CiviCRM a custom field which is a memo field with a text editor. If I update the contents of this field through the user interface contents is saved correctly as html. E.g. <p>Hello world</p>

However when I use the api (for example through the api explorer) the html gets malformed. Entering the same html results in the following: ><Hello world>/p<

How do I update the contents of a custom field which should html code?

Update: I disocvered there is an API Wrapper in place which encodes the html input. This wrapper gets executed for every api call. See https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/CRM/Utils/API/HTMLInputCoder.php#L147

Thanks, Jaap Jansma

Answer 1

I created a contact custom field with data type "Note" and field type "RichTextEditor" and then ran this API call:

CRM.api3('Contact', 'create', {
  "contact_type": "Individual",
  "id": 180,
  "custom_15": "<p><strong>foobar</strong></p>"
});

The value was stored as-is, and shows correctly in the UI.

This part of CRM_Utils_API_HTMLInputCoder should ensure that custom fields of type RichTextEditor are excluded.

One scenario in which this might not work: Let's say you have another API wrapper that renames a parameter from, say, food_preference to custom_22. If the renaming API wrapper runs after CRM_Utils_API_HTMLInputCoder (not sure what the order is there, I'd guess core ones run first), food_preference would already be encoded before it gets to your wrapper.