How to subscribe new users with Mailchimp API 3.0 and Gibbon 2.x

Question

In my app I want to auto-subscribe users to a MailChimp list when they are created. All of the documentation I have found focuses on MailChip API 2.0 and Gibbon 1.x.

Here is what I have so far:

I created a .env file with:

MAILCHIMP_API_KEY = "my_api_key"
MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID = "my_list_id"

I created an initializer called gibbon.rb with:

Gibbon::Request.api_key = ENV["MAILCHIMP_API_KEY"]
Gibbon::Request.timeout = 15

Then created a Job:

class SubscribeUserToMailingListJob < ActiveJob::Base
  queue_as :default

  def perform(user)
    gibbon = Gibbon::Request.new
    # I am getting errors from this line
    gibbon.lists(ENV["MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID"]).members.create(body: {email_address: user.email, status: "subscribed", merge_fields: {FNAME: user.name, LNAME: ""}})
  end
end

In my user.rb I've this after check

after_create :subscribe_user_to_mailing_list

And added this under private:

def subscribe_user_to_mailing_list
  SubscribeUserToMailingListJob.perform_later(self)
end

I am getting a 400 error from gibbon.lists(ENV["MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID"]).members.create(body: {email_address: user.email, status: "subscribed", merge_fields: {FNAME: user.name, LNAME: ""}})

********EDIT********

Per this conversation.

I think the error was occurring because the email address already existed in the list. The first time I got an error, the email address was added to the MailChimp list but the user was not created in my app due to another bug. Now when I try to create a user with the same email address the error 400 pops up because the email already exists. This also prevents the user from being created in my app.

Can somebody with a little more experience please verify if this is correct?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 31 '15 at 17:02

You're correct -- if you're making a POST call and the thing you're posting already exists, you'll get an error back. Until the API supports PUT, update or subscribe is a two-step operation. Check to see if the subscriber exists and then use the appropriate method. Or, you can just try to PATCH first and do a POST if that fails with a 404.

How to subscribe new users with Mailchimp API 3.0 and Gibbon 2.x

1 Answers1