What is API access?

Back To FAQs

Our API offers another way to add subscribers. It is an advanced feature that requires programming changes on your own site, so it probably won't be useful unless you are a programmer or have one on staff.

The main benefit of the API is that if you have an account creation process already on your site (for something unrelated to your blog) you can automate the process of asking new users to subscribe to your blog.

You can place a snippet of code on your site which calls our API after a user creates an account on your site. The call to FeedmailPro will send them your "confirmation email", which asks them to subscribe to your blog. If they click the confirmation link (opting-in) then they will be subscribed.

You can customize the confirmation email so it makes more sense in this context. For example, you may want to use a message like "Thanks for signing up! By the way, do you also want to get updates from our blog? If so just click the link below."

Note that subscribers added through the API will still have to opt-in, so it's best for new subscribers only. If you want to import subscribers from an existing list then you should use the regular import process. The API is rate limited, and adding subscribers too quickly will result in them being blocked (and your account being disabled).

Steps:

1. On the "settings" tab in your account, enable API access. Note your API key, we'll use this later.


2. Go to your feeds tab and click "edit" on the feed that you want to use. Look at the URL in your browser and find the ID of the feed (it's the number near the end, right before "/edit/"). We'll also be using this.


3. You'll now need to make an HTTP POST request to "http://feedmailpro.com/account/subscribers" with the feed_id, email you want to add, and your api key for authentication EACH time you want to add a new subscriber. See sample code below.


4. The user will receive your confirmation email and if they confirm it by clicking the link they will be subscribed to your feed.

Here is some sample code to help you integrate it into your site:

Sample Ruby Code

Sample PHP Code

If you generate code in another language and would like to share it, please post it to the support forum and we'll add it here.