Shopify - Update/Delete metafield via metafield API using PHP - php

Question

I've been stuck trying to update or delete a metafield that i created on user registration via the shopify customer API.
At first i tried to update the metafield using the customer API but it told me that the metafield already existed and i cannot add it again.
Then i used the user ID and made a call to retrieve all the metafields linked to the user using the metafield API - this worked and it returned all the metafields for me.
However my issue starts when i want to either delete or update the metafield that i've created.
I've tried a lot of different variations of REST calls but nothing seems to work.
To try and delete i used:
$baseUrl = "https://".$apikey.":".$password."#".$hostname."/admin/";
......
$curl = curl_init($baseUrl.'metafields/'.$metaID.'.json');
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "DELETE");
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
// Make the REST call, returning the result
$response = curl_exec($curl);
var_dump($response);
This did not do anything, so i tried going a level deeper and used the following URL:
$curl = curl_init($baseUrl.'customers/'.$custID.'/metafields/'.$metaID.'.json');
This URL did not work either.
Then I decided that i might as well just try and update the metafield to the new value that it was supposed to have.
I then tried the tried the following to update the value:
$metafield = array('metafields' => array(array(
'id' => $metaID,
'value' => '3',
'value_type' => 'string',
)));
$curl_url = $baseUrl.'customers/'.$custID.'/metafields/'.$metaID.'.json';
$ch = curl_init($curl_url);
$data_string = json_encode(array('metafield'=>$metafield));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "PUT");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data_string);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
'Content-Type: application/json',
'Content-Length: ' . strlen($data_string))
);
$server_output = curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
var_dump($server_output);
After that i tried the alternative URL:
$curl_url = $baseUrl.'metafields/'.$metaID.'.json';
Any idea where i messed up?

Answer 1

Part 2 works now - creating and updating a metafield
So after writing and testing different sets of code i got something to work.
$data = array('metafield' =>
array(
'key' => 'level',
'value' => '1',
'value_type' => 'string',
'namespace' => 'Wholesaler'
)
);
$curl_url = $baseUrl.'customers/'.$custID.'/metafields.json';
//$ch = curl_init($baseUrl.$sid.'.json'); //set the url
$session = curl_init($curl_url);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('X-HTTP-Method-Override: POST') );
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($data));
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
if(ereg("^(https)",$curl_url)) curl_setopt($session,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
$response = curl_exec($session);
curl_close($session);
$json = json_decode( $response, true );
var_dump($json);
echo "<br>-------------------------------------------------<br>";
echo $curl_url;
This code allowed me to create a metafield for a user that did not have it as well as update that metafield, as long as the key field and namespace makes it unique it will create a new field, if you use a key and namespace that already exists it will update the value.
I hope this helps someone else out there.

Answer 2

I do this call and it works perfect everytime:
DELETE /admin/customers/123456789/metafields/987654321.json
Where my customer ID is 123456789 and the metafield I want to kill has the ID 987654321

Answer 3

Part one is done - Delete
After doing alot of research and trying different pieces of script the following worked for me:
$curl_url = $baseUrl.'customers/'.$custID.'/metafields/'.$metaID.'.json';
//$curl_url = $baseUrl.'metafields/'.$metaID.'.json';
$session = curl_init($curl_url);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'DELETE');
curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
if(ereg("^(https)",$curl_url)) curl_setopt($session,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
$response = curl_exec($session);
curl_close($session);
$json = json_decode( $response, true );
var_dump($json);
I can now delete a metafield.