CakePHP Plugin for Mailchimp

With this datasource you can easily add users to your Mailchimp newsletter. It works with CakePHP 2.x.

Please check the original blogpost on our devblog for more background information.

It uses the current API version 2.0 from Mailchimp.

Setup

Install the plugin into the APP/Plugin folder, ideally via composer.

Make sure it is loaded - using CakePlugin::loadAll(), for example.

Use the Configure class to set the API data (via APP/Config/configs.php etc):

$config['Mailchimp'] = array(
	'apiKey' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
	'defaultListId' => 'YOUR_LIST_ID',
	'defaultCampaignId => 'YOUR_CAMPAIGN_ID'
);

Don't forget to include that configs file in your bootstrap.php:

Configure::load('configs');

Usage

Include the Model where you need it via

$this->Mailchimp = ClassRegistry::init('Mailchimp.Mailchimp');

$this->MailchimpSubscriber = ClassRegistry::init('Mailchimp.MailchimpSubscriber');

$this->MailchimpCampaign = ClassRegistry::init('Mailchimp.MailchimpCampaign');

Either use the available wrapper functionality or directly invoke call() on the models;

Usage of Subscriber datasource

Warning: For the subscriptions there is also a datasource approach available. This is not yet fully tested/working for API 2.0, though.

Add the $mailchimp datasource to APP/Config/database.php

public $mailchimp = array(
	'datasource' => 'Mailchimp.MailchimpSubscriberSource',
	'apikey' => 'YOUR_API_KEY', // Optional, I prefer using Configure
	'defaultListId' => 'YOUR_LIST_ID', // Optional, I prefer using Configure
);

When you've set the datasource up correctly, you will now be able to do stuff like $this->MailchimpSubscriber->save($this->request->data), or call other regular Model methods (like Model::find) from any controller that uses the MailchimpSubscriber model.

Debugging

Unfortunately, the 2.0 vendor class from Mailchimp does not through exceptions by itself. So if your methods return false and you need to know the error message/code you will have to use the following:

debug($this->MailchimpSubscriber->response);

with $this->MailchimpSubscriber being your model.

You can, however, make the plugin throw exceptions using

	Configure::write('Mailchimp.exceptions', true);

This will then throw a MailchimpException you can catch, log away and continue in your code.

Dependencies

Possibly my Tools plugin for the admin backend (optional)

Mandrill

This plugin now also contains some Mandrill API wrapper as well as MandrillTransport for sending it via CakeEmail. This requires

	$config['Mandrill'] = array(
		'apiKey' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
	);

Disclaimer

2013/2014: Upgraded Mailchimp API from 1.3 to 2.0

al-v-in/cakephp-mailchimp