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looking for some suggestions on best practice implementation for synching external data to CiviCRM custom data.

I'm using the Joomla 2 CiviCRM User Sync plugin to sync my Joomla 3.9.24 user registration data from Community Builder to CiviCRM 5.33.2. That works great for basic name/username/email, but I have a couple of custom Community Builder fields I'd also like to sync to the CiviCRM records.

Community Builder includes a plugin to execute an SQL query via CB action hooks, and that works great for updating CiviCRM fields with simple data types (varchar, integer). But I have one multi-select CB custom field stored as a text field with separators, which needs to go into a Civi multi-select custom field. I know CiviCRM has a special "TEXT_SEPARATOR" variable that it uses storing multi-value text strings in its database, but I can't figure out 1) what that character is and 2) how I can write it into my SQL.

So: is it even possible to write external SQL to do this? Or is there an API call or other programmatic way I should go about doing these Civi custom field updates?

Thanks!

System deets: Joomla 3.9.24, Community Builder 2.5.0, CiviCRM 5.33.2, Joomla 2 CiviCRM User Sync 2.1.0 (https://civicrm.org/extensions/joomla-2-civicrm-user-synchronization)

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    For the text separator you can use it in sql as CHAR(1), and can use CONCAT() to combine with other strings.
    – Demerit
    Mar 6, 2021 at 15:02
  • THANK YOU THANK YOU! That was EXACTLY the clue I needed. Now my CB and Civi are happily sharing data. (FYI for anyone else who comes across this in future -- Civi's use of separators requires CHAR(1) at the beginning and end of the multi-value text string, not just as delimiters inside the string.)
    – minbori
    Mar 8, 2021 at 10:39
  • Demerit, I don't think I can award a bounty to a comment -- would you mind putting that into an answer so I can credit you properly?
    – minbori
    Mar 8, 2021 at 10:42
  • Ok have put it as an answer.
    – Demerit
    Mar 8, 2021 at 13:32

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For the text separator you can use it in sql as CHAR(1), and can use CONCAT() to combine with other strings.

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