posting data to an API

September 12, 2023

I’m working with a vendors API and the documentation is a little sparse.

they are looking for a post formatted like this.

{"import":{"members":[{"organization_customer_identifier":"XXXXXX","program_customer_identifier":"XXXXXX","member_customer_identifier":"XXX-XXX-XXXX","first_name":"Mister","last_name":"Tester","email_address":USER@DOMAIN.COM,"member_status":"OOOO","record_identifier":"XXX"}]}}'

my code is submitting it like this.

{"members":{"organization_customer_identifier":"XXXXXX","program_customer_identifier":"XXXXXX","member_status":"OOOO","member_customer_identifier":"XXX-XXX-XXXX","first_name":"Mister","last_name":"Tester","email_address":"USER@DOMAIN.COM","record_identifier":"XXX"}}

I’m not that versed in using PHP to submit to an API with json/curl… as i understand it "import" is object and "members" is the array, i am missing the object. their examples have only shown expected results. their example results show multiple entries in the members array, i will only be submitting 1 member as they register. so i have no need to roll through an array of members.

here is my PHP.

$url = 'https://api-domain.com/import';
$ch = curl_init($url);
$data = array(
    'organization_customer_identifier' => 'XXXXX',
    'program_customer_identifier' => 'XXXXXX',
    'member_status' => 'OOOO',
    'member_customer_identifier' => 'PPPPPPPPPP',
    'first_name' => 'Mister',
    'last_name' => 'Tester',
    'email_address' => 'USER@DOMAIN.COM',
    'record_identifier' => 'XXX'
);
$payload = json_encode(array("import" => $data));

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $payload);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Accept: application/json', 'Content-Type: application/json', 'Access-Token: xxxxxxxxxx'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

thanks in advance for any direction on how to resolve this or correct my ignorance.

Sean

>Solution :

you’re missing the members array.

$data = ['members' => [[
    'organization_customer_identifier' => 'XXXXX',
    'program_customer_identifier' => 'XXXXXX',
    'member_status' => 'OOOO',
    'member_customer_identifier' => 'PPPPPPPPPP',
    'first_name' => 'Mister',
    'last_name' => 'Tester',
    'email_address' => 'USER@DOMAIN.COM',
    'record_identifier' => 'XXX'
]]];
$payload = json_encode(["import" => $data]);

To get the correspondence between JSON and PHP arrays, each [] or {} in the JSON corresponds to a PHP array, which is in [] in either case. {} corresponds to associative arrays; the keys are the same, but PHP uses => instead of :.

So when you see "members":[{ in the JSON, that corresponds to "members" => [[ in PHP.