Does anyone know anything about the Mad Mimi Mailer API? - php

Question

Good evening good people. I have run across an issue that I am trying to resolve. Here is the context:
In an email template (using the email service provider Mad Mimi) I have a placeholder {name}
In my implementation of calling their API to send a transactional email, I am posting data using a cURL request. This data includes my api key and username, so I can't give that part of the code but here is a link to the documentation that I am using to try to get this done. (https://madmimi.com/developer/mailer/methods)
Here is the sample from the link above:
promotion_name=Welcome to Acme Widgets
recipient=Dave Hoover <dave#example.com>
body=--- \nname: Some YAML data\n
My PHP Code is this: (there are 2 other variables before these)
$myvars .= '&recipient='.$email;
$myvars .= '&promotion_name=Welcome';
$myvars .= '&body= name: Some YAML data';
$ch = curl_init( $url );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $myvars);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
return (curl_exec( $ch ));
The result that I get from the send is:
Email Result:Your body parameter was unable to be parsed, due to: (): mapping values are not allowed in this context at line 1 column 9. Please ensure the body parameter is valid YAML: --- name: Some YAML data...
Can anyone help out?
Thanks!!
Edit: I changed my code to be like this:
$url = 'https://api.madmimi.com/mailer';
$myvars = [
"username" => "xxxxxxxxxx",
"api_key" => "xxxxxxxxxx",
"recipient" => "xxxxx#gmail.com",
"promotion_name" => "Welcome",
"body" => "--- \n firstname:John\n"
];
error_log('Mailer API Variables: ' . $myvars);
//TODO: Put the email transaction ID into the database FUTURE PHASE
$ch = curl_init( $url );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $myvars);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
error_log (curl_exec( $ch ));
I tried the body variable two ways. One urlencoded, one not. Here are the responses from both tries.
[05-Dec-2020 10:20:55 America/Boise] Mailer API Variables: Array
[05-Dec-2020 10:20:56 America/Boise] Your email has {placeholders} in it, but you have not specified their replacements in the body parameter, which was: ---+%0A+firstname%3AJohn%0A
[05-Dec-2020 10:22:10 America/Boise] Mailer API Variables: Array
[05-Dec-2020 10:22:10 America/Boise] Your email has {placeholders} in it, but you have not specified their replacements in the body parameter, which was: ---
firstname:John

Answer 1

According to the docs, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS takes either an urlencoded string or an array. Yours is neither, since the string you give contains spaces.
An array seems easier:
$myvars = [
"recipient" => $email,
"promotion_name" => "Welcome",
"body" => "--- \nname: Some YAML data\n"
];
By the way, you seem to not show your actual code. The error message you give says your YAML starts with --- but it doesn't in your code. The error implies that you simply forgot to include the linebreak after --- in your string.