Web Services Methods › Business Methods › createRequest

createRequest

The following parameters apply to the createRequest method:

Description

Creates a CA SDM Request (cr) object. You must use this function to create a Request; do not use createObject().

propertyValues is a list of values for each Property object that will be attached to the new Request. The Properties that are attached are determined by the new Request’s ‘category’ attribute value. All properties created from the CA SDM Web Services interface will have a default value (for more information, see Categories and Properties), which is important because a Request will not save until all of its Properties marked “required” have a value.

You may override the default by supplying values for any properties that will be attached when the Request is created. You must supply this information before the Request is created, since createRequest() attempts to back-store the object you most recently create. Use getPropertyInfoForCategory() to get a list of properties for a specific Category. This function returns the properties in order of their ‘sequence’ attribute, which is the expected order of the propertyValues array. For example, if the sequences and symbols of the properties are as follows:

100 - Hard Drive Size

200 - CPU 

300 - Memory

The propertyValues array, depending on the programming language, may appear as follows:

[“40 GB”, “Pentium 4 1.7 Ghz”, “256”]

getPropertyInfoForCategory() indicates which Properties are marked required.

If you do not set the Request category or do not want to set any Property values, pass an empty string for propertyValues.

If you do not want to rely on the default property values, the following is the suggested order for creating a new Request (or Issue or Change Order):

1. Retrieve a list of Categories/Areas. The object name for Request Area is ‘pcat’.
2. Call getPropertyInfoForCategory() and examine the list of properties for the category of the new Request/Issue/Change.
3. Create a value array for each of the properties returned. This is identified by the propertyValues parameter for the create operation.
4. Assemble the attrVals array and call the create method.

As an alternative to the previous procedure, you can retrieve the list of properties using getRelatedListValues() after createRequest() returns. Properties are stored in the ‘properties’ list for a Request.

Depending upon the application, it may be faster to at least cache the list of Categories, since this data does not change often at many client sites.

Note: By default, this method creates a Request. If you are using the ITIL methodology, you need to set the ‘type’ attribute in the attrVals array to define whether you are creating an Incident or a Problem ticket. For more information about ITIL procedures, see Note on Using the ITIL Methodology Installation.

Returns

Returns the new objects handle with all of its attribute values. List and LREL types are also returned, but as empty elements.