Upload and attach a file to an account or opportunity

Question

So I was wondering how I can attach a file to an account. Basically what we do is sell a product online that requires an agreement. When they buy the product, we generate a pdf of the agreement and mail it to them. What I would like to do is upload the pdf agreement and attach it to the corresponding opportunity or account. I am pretty sure this can be accomplished, but I don't see much documentation on it. I am using php and the API to create everything. Any one have any ideas?

Answer 1

You can just create an Attachment on the Account. It should work the same way as creating an object in Salesforce.

Some important considerations:

• The API sends and receives the binary file attachment data encoded as a base64Binary data type. Prior to creating a record, client applications must encode the binary attachment data as base64. Upon receiving a response, client applications must decode the base64 data to binary (this conversion is usually handled for you by the SOAP client).

• The create call restricts these files to a maximum size of 5 MB. For a file attached to a Solution, the limit is 1.5MB. The maximum email attachment size is 3 MB.

Answer 2

I would recommend using chatter files related to the record rather than attachments as chatter files have a number of features that attachments lack.

To upload a file and relate it to a record you use a feeditem with the following required fields.

ContentData: base64 encoded file
ContentFileName: file name
ParentId: account/opportunity ID
Type: 'ContentPost'