Add a custom action in SugarCRM 7

By Amer Wilson
Last Modified Date 29 Jul 2021

(Updated on July 2021)

[In 2020 SugarCRM 10 was released offering a wide array of new functionality. You can read up on the latest edition of SugarCRM: Sugar 10 here. The same process mentioned in this blog can be implemented in SugarCRM 10.]

In SugarCRM 7, custom actions cannot be added for sidecar modules. You will need to create a layout and view for a custom action. To retrieve/save on that view/layout, a REST API call is used.

To setup a custom layout e.g ‘my-view’
create a php file ./custom/clients/base/layouts/setup/setup.php to render a custom view named “my-view”.

<!–?php

$viewdefs[‘base’][‘layout’][‘setup’] = array(
‘type’ => ‘simple’,
‘components’ => array(
array(
‘view’ => ‘my-view’,
),
),
);

Creating a custom View:

A custom view helps render the content that is to be viewed. The javascript controller defines how the page should be rendered. This is defined in ‘ ./custom/clients/base/views/my-view/my-view.js ‘

({
className: ‘setup tcenter’,

loadData: function (options) {
this.render();
}
})

A handlebars template is then created to show the result in ‘./custom/clients/base/views/my-view/my-view.hbs’
{

My View!!

}
To see your newly created layout and view, you will navigate to:

//{site url}/#/layout/setup

Custom API:
To generate the data required, we can create a custom REST API by extending Sugar 7’s REST API.