Create record in salesforce lightning API curl/php - php

Question

I am trying to use the REST lightning API for salesforce. So far I can have it connect succesfully and get info on some things, however I am struggling to get it to actually create new records. Below is the code, I have excluding my connection code and getting my Bearer token, as both those work fine and don't impact the second half of creating a record.
<?php
$url = $instance_url.'/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Account/';
$headers = array(
'Content-Type: application/json'
);
$data = array(
'Name' => "AccountHEX"
);
$ch2 = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch2,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($data));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch2,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch2,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$head = 'Authorization: Bearer '.$access_token;
curl_setopt($ch2, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array($head));
//execute post
$result = null;
$result = curl_exec($ch2);
echo $result;
?>
The result I get seems to be just the info on the account object:
{
"objectDescribe":{
"activateable":false,
"createable":true,
"custom":false,
"customSetting":false,
"deletable":true,
"deprecatedAndHidden":false,
"feedEnabled":true,
"keyPrefix":"001",
"label":"Account",
"labelPlural":"Accounts",
"layoutable":true,
"mergeable":true,
"name":"Account",
"queryable":true,
"replicateable":true,
"retrieveable":true,
"searchable":true,
"triggerable":true,
"undeletable":true,
"updateable":true,
"urls":{
"rowTemplate":"/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Account/{ID}",
"describe":"/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Account/describe",
"sobject":"/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Account"
}
},
"recentItems":[
]
}
So it is treating it more as a query rather than a creation. I have tried a couple different $data arrangments. Incluidng just doing name right away, and putting it inside the fields array.
Trying to do this bassed on this:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/dome_sobject_create.htm
Any ideas how to get it to create the record?

Answer 1

What you're receiving is the Account sObject describe, which is the return value for a GET request. You need to make a POST request to create the sObject.
Your body data does not need to be nested in a fields key. Your JSON should look like the example from the documentation,
{
"Name" : "Express Logistics and Transport"
}
with all fields at the top level.
Lastly, API v20.0 is extremely old. I would recommend declaring the latest API version in your endpoint URL, v46.0. Using old API versions can result in unexpected behavior and in certain fields being unavailable to you.