if(isset($_POST['subscribeMe']) && $_POST['subscribeMe'] == 1)
{
 
       //get the values we need from form(this should in aprt already be somewhere in the code your editing)
       $email=$_POST['email'];
       $fullName=$_POST['firstName']." ".$_POST['lastName'];
 
       //set values we shoudl know, and are constant
       $domain="domain of this form";
       $listname="list-name";
       $apiKey="666666666666";
 
       // using curl and passing 5 critical values to the api
       // list, domain, email, name and API Key
 
 
		$ch = curl_init('https://api.dreamhost.com/');
 		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
 		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "key=$apiKey&cmd=announcement_list-add_subscriber&listname=$listname&domain=$domain&email=$email&name=$fullName");
 		$result=curl_exec ($ch);
 		curl_close ($ch);
 
		if ( stripos( $result,'success') > 0){
			echo "<h2>Congrats! </h2><p>You have been added to our Mailing List</p>";
		}else{
			echo "<h2> Ooops! </h2><p>Unable to add your email to our announcement list please contact site administrator.</p>";
			echo "Code: " . $result;
		}
}// end if subscribe box checked

1. 
   2010 February 4

   Colin Goodier permalink

   Hi Edward,

   Thanks for the code, very useful However, I’m not sure if the line

   if ( stripos( $result,’success’) > 0){

   is right? I seem to be getting a ’1′ as the response in $result. Maybe boolean ‘true’? Leaving the code as above results in an error, although the subscription succeeds, and I get the ‘success subscribed’ text ok, but it just appears in the form response page. I think the error was because $result doesn’t contain the ‘success subscribed’ response that your code seems to expect?

   Maybe that needs to be handled differently.

   Colin
2. 
   2010 February 4

   Eddie permalink

   @Colin
   Sorry you’re having troubles, let’s see if we can’t fix them.

   When I wrote the article above it worked, and was based on the API documentation, http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Api#announcement_list-add_subscriber, which states;

   Result:

   success
   sent_opt_in_email

   Possible Errors:

   no_listname
   no_domain
   no_such_listname
   no_such_domain
   no_email
   invalid_email (may have specifics after a tab)
   already_subscribed
   email_may_not_be_added_to_any_dreamhost_list_ever
   email_requested_to_be_added_in_last_two_days_already
   internal_error_opting_in

   So the code you reference checks if the result contains success. (stripos returns 0 if false, otherwise the position), so we check that it is greater than zero, is that the “1″ your referring to?

   You could use a series of if/else blocks to handle any scenario.

   Do you have php debugging on? are you seeing any specific errors?
3. 
   2010 February 4

   Colin Goodier permalink

   Hi Eddie,

   I just changed the code to check for ’1′ in $result, and it worked, in the sense that it no longer gave me the error message.

   The thing is, the functionality worked fine, it did what it was supposed to (add a subscriber to the list), but it was giving me the output of the

   echo ” Ooops! Unable to add your email to our announcement list please contact site administrator.”;
   echo “Code: ” . $result;

   line, as if it hadn’t worked (when it had).

   I thought that ‘stripos’ was checking for a particular text string in $result, which wasn’t there, but maybe I misread that?

   Anyway, as I say, it seems to be working ok for me having made that one change, I just thought I’d give you the feedback on it. It does the job fine!

   Colin
4. 
   2010 February 4

   Colin Goodier permalink

   Eddie,

   Just re-read your response and took it in a bit more. You say

   “So the code you reference checks if the result contains success. (stripos returns 0 if false, otherwise the position), so we check that it is greater than zero, is that the “1″ your referring to?”

   That’s what I thought it was doing. You’re checking for the string ‘success’ in $result, right? But I checked the value of $result, and it doesn’t contain a string.
   In the case of a successful operation it contains the value ’1′ (at least when I run it), which is presumably why the ‘stripos’ line return an error. Maybe the Dreamhost guys changed something? It seems to be that $result contains a boolean value, not a string.

   Colin
5. 
   2010 February 5

   Colin Goodier permalink

   Hi Eddie,

   I got it. The answer is in the PHP manual entry for curl_exec()

   “Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure. However, if the CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER option is set, it will return the result on success, FALSE on failure. ”

   The way you’ve got it set up you are returning TRUE or FALSE in $result, but you are checking for the result (i.e. ‘success’).

   So if you add the line

   curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);

   The ‘stripos’ line should work correctly.

   Colin
6. 
   2010 February 6

   Eddie permalink

   Thanks Colin. That is a very useful find.
7. 
   2010 March 6

   Dave Gamble permalink

   Heya, thanks for this article.

   Here’s the cleanup for the response testing:

   $result will be ===FALSE if the curl operation itself fails.
   (yes, triple equals.)

   if (stripos($a,$b)>1) is an improper test, please see:
   http://php.net/manual/en/function.stripos.php

   To correct the code above, you need to change:
   if ( stripos( $result,’success’) > 0){
   to
   if ( $result!==false && stripos( $result,’success’)!==false){

   This is because stripos returns logical false if it doesn’t find it.
   Another neat (perhaps better?) way to test would be !strncasecmp($result,’success’,7)

   Also in your errorcode handling, you probably want to test the case where $result===false and report that as a failure to connect to the server.

   Thanks very much, this tutorial helped me A LOT!!

   Dave.
8. 
   2010 May 25

   Eddie permalink

   @Dave

   Thanks for the share Dave! I am really glad this article helped you too. DreamHost is building a great API that is useful for all sorts of domain admin scenarios.

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