What is the difference between the three association categories?

Developer Support APIs & Integrations
1

Hello,

Could you tell me what is the difference between the three association categories (“HUBSPOT_DEFINED”, “USER_DEFINED”, and “INTEGRATOR_DEFINED”)?
I tried adding a contact with an association, but it works only with the “HUBSPOT_DEFINED” association category. I make the following request:

curl --location 'https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/contacts' \
--header 'authorization: Bearer {token}' \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
--data '{
 "associations": [
 {
 "types": [
 {
 "associationCategory": "HUBSPOT_DEFINED",
 "associationTypeId": 1
 }
 ],
 "to": {
 "id": "{companyId}"
 }
 }
 ],
 "properties": {
 "lastname": "John",
 "firstname": "Doe"
 }
}'

If I change the category to “INTEGRATOR_DEFINED” the API returns the following error:
“Cannot get definitions for unsupported categories: [INTEGRATOR_DEFINED]”

And if I change the category to “USER_DEFINED” the API returns another error:

“Invalid association spec: AssociationSpec{associationCategory=USER_DEFINED, associationTypeId=1}”

I’m a bit confused about how the categories are used. I can’t find information about them in the documentation, so I would be grateful if someone could explain the difference between the three categories and why, in my case, it only works with “HUBSPOT_DEFINED”.

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Rosen Ivanov

2

Hey, @RIvanov :waving_hand: The Associations API documentation added a list of HubSpot created associations. So that helps simplify things a bit — Association type ID values. Other things of note:

  • Associations are omnidirectional, so Deal > Contact will be different from Contact > Deal, etc

  • Custom associations and associations from Custom Objects to default objects like Contacts, Deals, Tickets, etc. need to be queried using this endpoint and make a GET request to

    /crm/v4/associations/{fromObjectType}/{toObjectType}/labels

For the third option, INTEGRATOR_DEFINED, do you have a specific use case or example? Although the API example page exposes this option, the documentation doesn’t provide an example.

Best,

Jaycee

3

Hey, Jaycee,

Thanks for the quick reply,

But my question was about the categories, not the association type ID values or the associations themselves.

I would like to know how to decide which of the three categories to use. And why, in the example above, does it only work with the “HUBSPOT_DEFINED” category?

Best,

Rosen

4

@Jaycee_Lewis, do you have a chance to look into my question?