Newbie question: Integrating API with MySQL

[Curt Frieden]

Hey,

I have a (hopefully) quick question.

I have an iOS app gathering email addresses on the user registration and that is all going into a mysql db.  The server is all running php.

What I want to do is use the API to talk with my server so that registrations from my app go into my mailchimp mailing list (so I can mail updates about the app, etc.)

It looks like I can do that using this, right?:

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/2.0/lists/subscribe.php

So first off, am I correct in that this should satisfy my requirement?

Second off, how long (estimate) should it take my developers to integrate the API and get this working.

Just trying to get an idea of the complexity of this...

Thanks!

[Eric Muntz]

Hey Curt,

Welcome to MailChimp and the API group.  Your developers should have no problem integrating your PHP backend to send emails to MailChimp's API.  We have API wrapper libraries for PHP that make it really easy to integrate apps: http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/downloads/#php .  If they'd rather do it directly from the iOS app, there's a library for that also: https://github.com/mailchimp/ChimpKit2 .  They'll want to spend some time generally learning MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/getting-started-with-mailchimp/), but it should be straightforward to get a basic integration going.  

I don't want your developers mad at me, so I'm not going to provide a time estimate for their integration.  :)

-Eric

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[Curt Frieden]

Hey Eric,

Thanks for the response.  Much appreciated and validated my thoughts.

Now I know you don't particularly want to give estimates on this implementation but I'm hoping you could give me an idea...

My developers are trying to tell me it will take 30-50 hours to complete this which seems way too high based on the conversations I've had with other developers on this.

I have a guy from elance that has positive reviews that is proposing it will be done in 4 hours.

So... just trying to get an idea of what a real range is that makes sense here.

If you could let me know, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

On Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:30:25 AM UTC-8, Eric Muntz wrote:

Hey Curt,

Welcome to MailChimp and the API group.  Your developers should have no problem integrating your PHP backend to send emails to MailChimp's API.  We have API wrapper libraries for PHP that make it really easy to integrate apps: http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/downloads/#php .  If they'd rather do it directly from the iOS app, there's a library for that also: https://github.com/mailchimp/ChimpKit2 .  They'll want to spend some time generally learning MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/getting-started-with-mailchimp/), but it should be straightforward to get a basic integration going.  

I don't want your developers mad at me, so I'm not going to provide a time estimate for their integration.  :)

-Eric

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Curt Frieden <c...@fitsnapp.com> wrote:

Hey,

I have a (hopefully) quick question.

I have an iOS app gathering email addresses on the user registration and that is all going into a mysql db.  The server is all running php.

What I want to do is use the API to talk with my server so that registrations from my app go into my mailchimp mailing list (so I can mail updates about the app, etc.)

It looks like I can do that using this, right?:

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/2.0/lists/subscribe.php

So first off, am I correct in that this should satisfy my requirement?

Second off, how long (estimate) should it take my developers to integrate the API and get this working.

Just trying to get an idea of the complexity of this...

Thanks!

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[Luc Sorel Podbox]

Hi Curt,

I am a developer at Podbox, a web app which provides connector between business applications via APIs, and databases too (via stored procedures). Thus, we already provide a MySQL <-> MailChimp synchronization of contacts, including campaign results (opens, clicks and bounces).

This was not to do some sort of self-promotion - I am a developer, not a sales person :) - but to give you an idea of how much I played with the MailChimp APIs (1.3 and 2.0 versions). 4 hours seems to me to be a little underrated regarding that I think you need to:

• perform the API call to subscribe the contact. The API is well documented, so a couple of hours seems ok to me
• maybe log back the MailChimp id in your database to know that it has been subscribed
• what if the contact unsubscribe from MailChimp? Does it have to be logged back in your database?
  
• you need also to manage errors (eg. banned email addresses, the MailChilmp server could be down)

A couple of issues we stumble upon while building reliable connectors between data systems :)