Installation:

1. Install django-mailchimp-v1.3:

   pip install django-mailchimp-v1.3

2. Add a MAILCHIMP_API_KEY to your settings.py with your mailchimp API key as the value (obviously)

3. Add mailchimp to your project’s list of INSTALLED_APPS

4. To start using the API, you should start by using utils.get_connection(). This will use the API_KEY you just defined in settings.py

Subscribing a user to a list:

1. To get the list:

   list = mailchimp.utils.get_connection().get_list_by_id(<list key id>)

2. Now add a member to the mailing list:

   list.subscribe('example@example.com', {'EMAIL':'example@example.com'})

General info:

Mailchimp is a quite generic service. As such, it needs to store information on people who subscribe to a list, and that information is specific to this very list!

So to help you build dynamic forms (presumabely), mailchimp added the merge_vars. They are, basically, a dictionnary showing infromation and meta-information defined for each piece of information. Here’s what the default set of merge vars look like (ona brand new list with default options):

[
    {
    'field_type': 'email',
    'name': 'Email Address',
    'show': True,
    'default': None,
    'req': True,
    'public': True,
    'tag': 'EMAIL',
    'helptext': None,
    'order': '1',
    'size': '25'
    },{
    'field_type': 'text',
    'name': 'First Name',
    'show': True,
    'default': '',
    'req': False,
    'public': True,
    'tag': 'FNAME',
    'helptext': '',
    'order': '2',
    'size': '25'
    },{
    'field_type': 'text',
    'name': 'Last Name',
    'show': True,
    'default': '',
    'req': False,
    'public': True,
    'tag': 'LNAME',
    'helptext': '',
    'order': '3',
    'size': '25'
    }
]

As you can see, it’s a list of 3 dictionnaries, each containing several fields that you should use to build your user interface with (since you’re using this app, that means your Django form).

Obtaining them:

You can recreate this list using the following API call:

list = mailchimp.utils.get_connection().get_list_by_id(<The list's key ID>)
print list.merges

Using them:

When you make a post to mailchimp, you need to pass merge_vars. For example, in a new list created with the default settings on the mailchimp website, the following call adds a member to a list (with a little more info than our bare minimum example up there):

list = mailchimp.utils.get_connection().get_list_by_id(<The list's key ID>)
list.subscribe('example@example.com', {'EMAIL': 'example@example.com', 'FNAME': 'Monthy', 'LNAME': 'Pythons'})

Note the use of the ‘tag’ field as the key for fields (why they didn’t call it ‘key’ or ‘id’ is beyond comprehension).