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Now that you've learned how the API works,
let's talk about how to make API calls.

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One of our most frequently used
API calls is the subscribe call.

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Subscribing new members to a list in your
MailChimp account is an essential part of

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setting up whether you're building
a custom sign up form, connecting a third

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party CRM to MailChimp, or just syncing
an existing database of emails.

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Here's everything you'll
need to make your API calls.

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First, you'll need a MailChimp API key.

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We've gone over how to
create a new key and

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where to get it,
if you don't have it handy.

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Next, you'll need a MailChimp list ID.

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A list ID can be gathered via the API or
through the application.

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More on this in a second.

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You'll also need your new
subscriber's email address.

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In order to add a new member
to a list in MailChimp,

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they have to have a unique email address.

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Finally, you also have the option
to pass in merge field or

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merge tag information like first name and
last name.

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This is subscriber
specific information and

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can be recalled dynamically
in an email campaign.

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And here's the workflow we'll use,
first we'll make a get request to the list

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endpoint, and
get all of our list information.

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Then we'll make a second get
request to the specific list

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to see that list information.

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Then we'll make a get request
to the list slash list ID

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slash members endpoint to view
the existing subscribers.

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And finally, we'll make a post request
to the list slash list ID slash member's

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endpoint, with information about the new
subscriber and adding them to the list.

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This specific workflow won't
be necessary every time.

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You'll make a few extra calls to get
familiar with the MailChimp API and

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get the information you need.

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Since you already have your API key for

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this account, look at the list where
you want to subscribe the new member.

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Within MailChimp, each list is treated
as its own separate entity, and

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uniquely identified with its ID.

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There are a couple ways
to find the list ID.

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To view your list ID within
a MailChimp account,

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click on the list tab
in the navigation bar.

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Find the list you wanna use and
in the settings drawer choose Settings.

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At the bottom of the settings page
you'll see your list unique ID.

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You can also find this information
under list name & defaults.

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Alternatively, if you're building
an app or just writing a script,

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you may want a more programmatic way to
go about finding your list and their IDs.

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That's where the MailChimp API
does the heavy lifting for you.

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With a get request you can
retrieve a collection of

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lists within a MailChimp account.

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For all API calls you'll need an API
key to tell MailChimp who you are.

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However, depending on what sort
of information you're sending or

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receiving, you may need to point
towards specific resources or

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include additional parameters.

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For instance, if you wanted to create
a new campaign, you'd need to send

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information about the subject line,
from address, and actual HTML content.

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If you just wanted to get a list
of your existing campaigns,

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you don't need all of that information.

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In short, it's always worth having
a look at the documentation

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to see what's required for
a particular API call.

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If all you need is to get
information about your lists,

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the only thing that's required
is your MailChimp API key.

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If you're using one of
MailChimp's API wrappers,

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the wrapper handles the interaction
with MailChimp behind the scenes.

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Curl, on the other hand, means you
are going to do everything manually.

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This includes requesting the correct URL,
making sure all of your parameters

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are included and valid, and
using the correct type of HTTP request.

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For this course,
you'll be using terminal for Mac or

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command prompt on Windows
to make curl requests.

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If you're more comfortable with
another programming language,

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curl is universal enough that you should
be able to find a suitable library for

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your language of choice.

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Our API wrappers aim to simplify the
process for a number of languages as well.

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To get started with Curl,
open up terminal.

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Curl help to make web requests without
having to load up a browser like Chrome.

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Instead, you can make a get request
by putting the following into your

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terminal window.

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You'll use the command curl followed
by the URL you're requesting.

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If we wanted to make get request for
your MailChimp list, we'd use this format.

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We'll start with curl and
then add in our default API URL,

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which is https://us whatever
your data center is.

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.Api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists.

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Where the US portion of the URL
is your specific data center.

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3.0 is the version of the API we're using,
and

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lists is a specific resource
that we're requesting.

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Before you make this request though, you
need to let MailChimp know who you are and

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which account you wanna ask about.

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If you don't include an API key,
MailChimp will send you back an error.

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You can't just throw an API key anywhere
though, because MailChimp is looking in

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a very specific place for
this information, instead,

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you'll need to create an authorization
header with your curl request.

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To add a header you add
an argument to your curl request,

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and then in quotations marks fill
in the details about your header.

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In this case we'll start with curl,
-H for header, and

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then in quotation marks we'll
add authorization:apikey,

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which tells us the type of authorization,
and then are actual API key.

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And then we'll include our
URL to the list end point,

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https://us10.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists.

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Now you can successfully run this curl
request for your MailChimp email list.

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Depending on your account and

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how many lists you have, you should see
a JSON return with your list information.

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Looking at the docs, you can get a feel
for what data is being returned and

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where you might be able to locate it.

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As mentioned before,
you're looking specifically for a list ID.

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You may notice that there are two
possible return parameters

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that sound like they may be a match.

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ID, and web ID.

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The web ID parameter is all numbers,
and it's used within the application.

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Unfortunately, this doesn't uniquely
identify a list across all of MailChimp.

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But the ID value does.

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No two lists in MailChimp will have the
same ID value, so that's the one you want.

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ID is referred to as list
ID in the application.

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Lists ID tells us which specific
list you'll be sending or

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pulling information from.

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If you wanna get information
about a specific list,

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you can add an additional parameter
to pull information for that list.

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You'll make a get request
to the specific list.

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To get information about a specific list,

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you'll append the list unique ID
to the end of the curl request.

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Picking up with our previous curl
request we have the curl command,

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our authorization header,
and then our list URL.

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Now we just add the list unique
ID to the end of the URL, and

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we should see that list returned.

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Instead of getting information
about all of the lists and

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sorting through to find our match,
this tells MailChimp,

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we just wanna look at data for
a very specific list.

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You can get general data of about
each list in your MailChimp account

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by swapping out the ID portion
at the end of the URL.

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Great, now you have the information
you need for your list.

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But what other information that's
provided that may be helpful?

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Check out your documentation and

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see if you can pick out some interesting
values that you return with that API call.