Subsrcibe a user in MailChimp API V3 give bad response - php

Question

When I try to subscribe a user on mailchimp, it gives an error response pasted below:
‹<»nÃ0E…Вű2tòèt+ŠB‘[€.I¹0‚ü{i»è(Þ‹ÃC=Œ¬3šÁL"ómÀS‘úìbòSÌsïk¶¡ú–±ˆ“X‹ýÏìØb#¶HTé<¦Êìhµ¦3%mÜ·²¸\‘k#±R›áåréL#Q˜ß'ú+·[Ž"À×–”pCØQNÇ=¼V‚{ÄÎ<£÷èá#qŒ¢¸Ó®Å'pDníuu,º¼øML_Gl†‡ÙQÇ4£1n•+~·H±§?H¸«ÌT½;€ÛW|¹TÍóóùÿÿI*¯Q`
Here is the PHP code:
$apiKey = 'YOUR API KEY';
$listId = 'YOUR LIST ID';
$url2 = 'https://us12.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists/'.$listId.'/members/';
$args = array(
'email' => 'abc#xyz.com',
'status' => 'subscribed',
'merge_fields' => array(
'first_name' => 'WOW',
'last_name' => 'WOW',
'mobile'=>'',
'message'=>'',
'ID'=>'000'
));
function syncMailchimp($url,$apiKey,$args) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "user apikey:" . $apiKey);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'PHP-MCAPI/3.0');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($args));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}
Is the server sending bad data or is client side using a wrong encoding and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

Changing the key called email to email_address appears to have fixed it. Perhaps that bad key caused the server to puke.
$args = array(
'email' => 'abc#xyz.com',
'status' => 'subscribed',
'merge_fields' => array(
'first_name' => 'WOW',
'last_name' => 'WOW',
'mobile'=>'',
'message'=>'',
'ID'=>'000'
));
to
$args = array(
'email_address' => 'abc#xyz.com',
'status' => 'subscribed',
'merge_fields' => array(
'first_name' => 'WOW',
'last_name' => 'WOW',
'mobile'=>'',
'message'=>'',
'ID'=>'000'
));