[AS3] A look into the MailChimp’s API

For a current project, i had to build a simple solution to suscribe to a newsletter without having to be redirected anywhere else.
MailChimp is an extremely powerful social tool, and probably the best email marketing platform available! Anyway, I will not cover MailChimp with praises, but if you are interested, just take a look.

Before using the piece of code below, you need to create 3 things :

• A texfield named emailAddress,

• A submit button, let’s call it submitBtn (what an amazing name)!

• Finally, a respond textfield where in case of success or error a message wil be displayed. We will call it responseText

Now, the end of the code.

//api and list id keys
var _api:String = "YOUR_MAILCHIMP_API_KEY";
var _listID:String = "LIST_ID_HERE";
 
//text box handler
emailAddress.text = "email address";
emailAddress.tabIndex = 1;
emailAddress.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN, txtFocusIn);
emailAddress.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT, txtFocusOut);
 
function txtFocusIn(e:FocusEvent) {
        emailAddress.text = "";
}
function txtFocusOut(e:FocusEvent) {
        if (emailAddress.text == "") {
                emailAddress.text = "email address";
        }
}
 
//button setup
submitBtn.buttonMode = true;
submitBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, submitForm);
 
function submitForm(e:Event) {
 
        var email:String = emailAddress.text;
 
        //check if email is valid
        if (isValidEmail(email)) {
 
                //set response text
                responseText.text = "sending...";
 
                //disable the submit button
                submitBtn.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, submitForm);
 
                //setup POST
                var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables("method=listSubscribe&amp;output=xml&amp;apikey=" + _api + "&amp;id=" + _listID + "&amp;email_address=" + email + "&amp;merge_vars=");
                var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest();
                request.url = "http://api.mailchimp.com/1.2/?method=listSubscribe";
                request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
                request.data = variables;
 
                var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
                loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
                loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler);
 
                try {
                        trace("loading...");
                        responseText.text = "loading...";
                        loader.load(request);
                }
                catch(error:Error) {
                        trace("unable to load URL");
                        responseText.text = "Oh, something went wrong, please try again. Thanks!";
                        trace(e.target.data);
                }
                function completeHandler(e:Event) {
                        var _t:String = unescape(e.target.data); //decode the url
 
                        var _xml:XMLList = new XMLList(_t); //parse the xml
                        trace(_xml.@type);
                        if (_xml.@type == "array") { //check to see if there is an error
                                trace(_xml.error);
                                responseText.text = _xml.error;
                                resetForm();
                        } else if (_xml.@type == "boolean") { //check to see if successfully added
                                trace("successfully added to list");
                                responseText.text = "You have beeen successfully added to our list. Thank you!";
                                resetForm();
                        }
                }
 
        } else {
                trace ("email invalid");
        resetForm ();
                responseText.text = "invalid email!";
        }
 
}
 
//validate given email
function isValidEmail(_e:String):Boolean {
        var exp:RegExp = /^[a-z][\w.-]+@\w[\w.-]+\.[\w.-]*[a-z][a-z]$/i;
    return exp.test(_e);
}
 
//reset the form elements
function resetForm(){
        submitBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, submitForm);
        emailAddress.text = "email address";
 
}