Zendesk PHP integration snippet for Single Sign On (SSO)

zendesk_SSO.php

/* 
 * Remote authentication snippet in PHP fro Zendesk
 * See: http://www.zendesk.com/support/api/remote-authentication 
 */

/* This is the token that you can find or recreate on https://bloomboard.zendesk.com/agent/#/admin/security */
$token = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'; 
/* Insert your account prefix here. Ex: yoursite.zendesk.com */
$urlPrefix = "yoursite"; 

//Name and email are mandatory. The other can be empty strings
$param = array(
    'name'             => $user['first_name'].' '.$user['last_name'], 
    'email'            => $user['email'],
    'external_id'      => '', 
    'organization'     => $user['org_id'],
    'tags'             => '',
    'remote_photo_url' => $user['pic'], 
    //'returnTo'       => '',
);

/* Timestamp */
$ts = isset($_GET['timestamp']) ? $_GET['timestamp'] : time(); 
$param['timestamp'] = $ts;

/* Hash please */
$blob   = "{$param['name']}|{$param['email']}|{$param['external_id']}|{$param['organization']}|{$param['tags']}|{$param['remote_photo_url']}|$token|$ts";
$hash      = MD5($blob); 
$param['hash'] = $hash;

//This can be used as direct link to create/login a user in Zendesk
$sso_url = "https://".$urlPrefix.".zendesk.com/access/remoteauth/?".http_build_query($param);

//Use this line in the login redirect URL
header("Location: ".$sso_url);

I've got in touch with the dev about this issue but I thought I would include the solution here too; On line 32 you'll need to wrap your http_build_query() method with htmlentities().

The reason for this is that &timestamp resolves to "xtamp" when parsed into a URL. This is due to &times being a HTML character for the multiplication symbol. It's bad practice on Zendesk's part, and I doubt they'll change it now but since there's a lot of PHP integrating with Zendesk I thought an update to your code would help you (and many others) out :)

Best,
~C.