Javascript + MailChimp API subscribe

barryedmund picture barryedmund · Oct 30, 2013 · Viewed 22.2k times · Source

When making this request:

// Subscribe a new account holder to a MailChimp list
function subscribeSomeoneToMailChimpList()
{
  var options =
  {
    "apikey": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "id": "xxxxxx",
    "email":
    {
      "email": "[email protected]"
    },
    "send_welcome": false
  };
  var mcSubscribeRequest = UrlFetchApp.fetch("https://us4.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/lists/subscribe.json", options);
  var mcListObject = Utilities.jsonParse(mcSubscribeRequest.getContentText());
}

This response is returned:

Request failed for https://us4.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/lists/subscribe.json returned code 500. Truncated server response: {"status":"error","code":-100,"name":"ValidationError","error":"You must specify a apikey value"} (use muteHttpExceptions option to examine full response) (line 120, file "v2")

Line 120 is the line on which UrlFetchApp.fetch is called.

The API key is valid (I have tested with simpler API calls that don't include associative arrays). When I append the API key directly to the base URL and remove it from the options, I get an error saying that the list ID is invalid. When I then append the list ID directly to the base URL and remove it from options, I get an error saying that the email address must be in associative array form.

My question is: Using the above format, how does one send requests that contain associative arrays?

The relevant API documentation can be found here.

Answer

barryedmund picture barryedmund · Mar 18, 2014

After further research & tinkering, I was able to solve this:

https://<dc>.api.mailchimp.com/2.0/lists/subscribe.json?apikey=<my_api_key>&id=<my_list_id>&email[email][email protected]&merge_vars[FNAME]=John&merge_vars[LNAME]=Doe&double_optin=false&send_welcome=false

Where <dc> should be replaced with the portion after the dash in your API Key. e.g. "us1", "us2", "uk1", etc.