Creating Incrementing Membership Numbers - On Right Track?

[chapmanla]

I will be importing a member database that has previously assigned membership numbers.  I plan on mapping these numbers to the External ID Field.  On the front end, I would like existing members to see their membership number and new members to be assigned an incremented value of the last assigned membership number.  I think the only way to do this is to write some PHP code that would look for an empty value in the External ID field and then assign a value that is "+1" to value of the External ID field in the immediately preceding record (I'll make I import the initial records are imported so the the existing membership numbers are in sequence).

Before I try to teach myself how to do this, I am asking any experts out there if there is a better way to accomplish this.

Thanks.

[Dave Greenberg]

Some things to consider:
* Implement the post_hook to calculate and set the next available External ID when contact records are inserted

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviCRM+hook+specification#CiviCRMhookspecification-hookcivicrmpost

* You probably should lock the contact table, then get the maximum current value for External ID, then set the next value and save (keeping in mind the External ID has a unique constraint - so if your code tries to set the same value in 2 records you'll get a DB error).

[BusinessMediaCenter]

chapmanla

Were you able to get this working?  I need to do the same (create incrementing external id), but am just not good enough with hooks yet to understand how to do this properly


Please advise, thanks!

[Eileen]

Does it HAVE to start from the last number in the system. You have an automatically incrementing number for memberships - the membership ID.

The 'traditional' way to do something like this when migrating from one system to another is to pick a number bigger than the largest one in use and then add that to your membership number. E.g your legacy numbers might be 1-1966. You then start your civi numbers at 2000+ membership ID.

Then you don't need to store it & your staff can easily recognise which system it's from

[BusinessMediaCenter]

Yep, it has to auto increment the external id from the last available number as we query and use both the external id and civi #s in a legacy application.  Suggestions?

thanks!

[adshill]

For info, we recently carried this out and I decided to write up the results. Instead of using the external identifier we used the contact ID. You can read the results on the Wiki:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/Import+previously+assigned%2C+non-consecutive+membership+numbers+as+Contact+ID%27s

Hope this helps (even if its a bit overdue!)

[BusinessMediaCenter]

Thanks for this, hopefully this will help someone.  FWIW, we wound up altering the legacy app's code