Mail::Chimp3 Add Member

JEWebDes has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm far from being a true Perl monk, and here's proof. I've been trying to add a member to a MailChimp list, but keep getting a 400 Bad Request - 'This value should of type object' error. The thing is I don't know how to build the Perl object required. Here's what I've tried:

my $mailchimp = Mail::Chimp3->new(
    api_key => 'mykey'
);
my %merge_fields = (
    'FNAME' => 'My',
    'LNAME' => 'Name',
    'PHONE' => '760-720-0000'
);
my $response = $mailchimp->add_member (
    list_id  => '49ef108521',
    email_address => 'test@jmydomain.com',
    status => 'subscribed',
    merge_fields => %merge_fields
);
[download]

Obviously I haven't built the merge_field Perl object correctly. How should it be coded?

Thanks for the help!

Comment on Mail::Chimp3 Add Member Download Code

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Re: Mail::Chimp3 Add Member by Fletch (Bishop) on Jan 27, 2020 at 19:11 UTC
Not familiar with that module, but my guess is that you should be passing a reference to your hash `merge_fields => \%merge_fields` insetead. When you name the hash itself there it's expanding out into a list of the key/value pairs in the hash. See perldata, perlref, perldsc. The cake is a lie. The cake is a lie. The cake is a lie.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Mail::Chimp3 Add Member by JEWebDes (Novice) on Jan 27, 2020 at 22:28 UTC
Fletch, you are so right. That took care of the error. Thanks.	[reply]
Re: Mail::Chimp3 Add Member by 1nickt (Canon) on Jan 27, 2020 at 20:25 UTC
Hi, "object" there refers to a JSON object that the MailChimp server is expecting to receive as the value of the `merge_fields` param, not a Perl object. The module you are using handles converting your arguments to `add_member` into the right format for the HTTP call, but as Fletch said you are passing in a hash, which expands to a list, so `merge_fields` is getting as its value just the first key from your hash (and a bunch of other bogus params are being passed and presumably ignored). When you pass a reference to the hash instead it is a single data structure and the module will properly convert it to a JSON "object" when making the call to MailChimp. Hope this helps! The way forward always starts with a minimal test.	[reply] [d/l] [select]