Quickbooks Desktop to send information through REST API

Question

Very shortly I will be required to do an integration between Quickbooks Desktop and a PHP website. I'm aware that there exists a PHP QuickBooks class that helps with integrating, but to my knowledge that only works when the PHP site is the one to initiate contact with the Desktop application. It's required of me that when a Purchase Order and/or Product is created on QuickBooks, it will automatically (and instantaneously) send the information over to my website using a REST API. Considering there will be multiple instances of QuickBooks Desktop that will be connected (we will allow customers to use a QuickBooks application that we will build), it is not practical to have to constantly check if ALL of those QuickBooks Desktop instances have any new Purchase Orders or Products that have been created since the last time we checked.

Is there a way to somehow add code to QuickBooks to send Purchase Orders and Products (upon creation) to my website using a REST API?

Thank you

Answer 1

QuickBooks itself doesn't really have any reliable method of catching events like you're talking about, and also doesn't have any way to then relay those events to an external REST API. So, you're not going to find exactly what you're looking for - it isn't possible.

With that said, you CAN get close by having an external application that polls QuickBooks periodically (as often as every few seconds) to grab new data from it, and then relays that data up to your REST API.

The easiest way to do this is via the Web Connector. It can poll as frequently as 1 minute, and is very capable of doing exactly what you're talking about. If you want to go with the Web Connector, your best bet is probably this open-source QuickBooks PHP DevKit (disclaimer: I'm the author). You could start with the Web Connector quick-start guide.

The harder way, but more flexible way is to write a custom QuickBooks SDK application that sits alongside QuickBooks, polls QuickBooks periodically, and relays that data up to your app. If you want to do this, you should check out the QuickBooks SDK - it has some C# and VB.NET examples in it which should prove useful.

Some specific notes:

but to my knowledge that only works when the PHP site is the one to initiate contact with the Desktop application.

Actually no - it only works when the Web Connector (which runs alongside QuickBooks) initiates the communication. But you can set it to run every 1 minute, which makes it pretty much constantly run and push data up to your app.

it will automatically

This is easily do-able with either the Web Connector or a custom SDK app.

(and instantaneously)

This isn't do-able. QuickBooks isn't even fast-enough performing to instantaneously relay data. You will never get instant data transfers from QuickBooks, so just forget about it now. (This is especially the case when you realize that there are lots of things in QuickBooks that can completely lock integrated applications out of even connecting to the data file - single-user mode, QuickBooks automatic updates, QuickBooks not being running, too many users in QuickBooks, etc.)

send the information over to my website using a REST API.

If using the Web Connector, your website receives the data, and you can then transform it and send it to your REST API.

If using a custom SDK app, you can write custom code to do that no problem.

it is not practical to have to constantly check if ALL of those QuickBooks Desktop instances have any new Purchase Orders or Products that have been created since the last time we checked.

Are you sure? We do this every day for thousands and thousands of people on ridiculously under-powered hardware.