Chargify API coupon creation

Question

I am currently working on a project and facing a problem with a task. I am trying to randomly generate a 6 digit coupon number and post it to chargify account via there API. If the coupon creation is successful I want the same coupon code to be send to the customer through Email.

As per chargify documentation this is how I should send all the details to chargify from my application :

{"subscription":{
      "product_handle":"[@product.handle]",
      "customer_attributes":{
        "first_name":"Joe",
        "last_name":"Blow",
        "email":"joe@example.com"
      },
      "credit_card_attributes":{
        "full_number":"1",
        "expiration_month":"10",
        "expiration_year":"2020"
      },
      "coupon_code":"6 digit random code"
    }}
    """

https://[@subdomain].chargify.com/subscriptions.json.

I am able to create a 6 digit random numerical code by this method :

rand(999999).to_s.center(6, rand(9).to_s).

However this does not seem to be working for me. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Welcome to stackoverflow! Can you please tell us what about that code isn't working? — Wayne Conrad, Jul 02 '11 at 23:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 03 '11 at 00:25

I'm not part of our tech or dev staff, but I'm 99% sure you can only specify a previously-defined coupon code in that API call. You must define coupon codes in the Chargify admin web interface. In the API call above, you can apply a coupon to the subscription, but the assumption is that you already defined that coupon code in the admin interface.

We will add that capability in the future, but I don't have a specific date for you.

Sorry about that.

--- Lance Walley --- Chargify

Wayne Conrad · Answer 2 · 2011-07-02T23:05:01.347

I'm not sure what you're trying to do with your call to center. The most sensible thing to do would be to zero-fill the coupon code. This would do it:

"%06d" % rand(1000000)

This will generate codes such as "664001" and "061532".

Note that you want rand(1000000) rather than rand(999999). That's because rand gives you random integers between 0 and one less than the argument. rand(999999) will only give you random numbers up to 999998.

There's a violation of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) in the above code: Both the "06" and the "1000000" depend upon the length of the coupon code. Here's a fix for that:

COUPON_CODE_LENGTH = 6
"%0#{COUPON_CODE_LENGTH}d" % rand(10 ** COUPON_CODE_LENGTH)

Although longer, there's now only one thing to change if the coupon code length should change. The replacement of "magic numbers" with a named constant also helps the code to communicate its intent.

Chargify API coupon creation

2 Answers2