Adding recipient Groups to a CiviCRM Mailing via REST.. how?

Question

I have been able so far to create a new civi Mailing object and populate it, but confusingly I can't see a parameter in that to specify the mail destination group.

For context, I am dealing with Civi using pure REST api from a remote server. I have a solution to getting a custom template onto the server; the new problem is setting a schedule and delivery group, and initiating the send. I am using the python-civicrm library from github as the intermediary on the client.

I presume send happens as a result of setting the schedule -- i.e. I don't need an API call to say 'send mailing'? Is setting 'sheduled date' == 'now' safe or should I set a date of 'now + 1min' or similar?

So that leaves setting the delivery group. We already have groups defined in the DB, and I want to specify the group by name (and preferably be able to verify in advance that a group name is a valid destination, perhaps by doing a group name -> id lookup).

I think there might be a parameter to Mailing create 'groups' which can have keys 'include' and 'exclude'; at least, that's what the web form seems to do. However it's not mentioned in the REST api implementation.

Can anyone offer pointers?

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score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 02 '15 at 14:33

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I think you will find all you need in the following link :

Example of api call that is using the group include/exclude : https://gist.github.com/xurizaemon/6775471
Discussion about implementing mailing as an api - http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=24075.0

Otherwise, if it doesn't work, i suggest that you :

help adding this api in the CiviCRM Core - you could have some help on this on irc #civicrm (and have a look at https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-11023)
OR create an extension with the api you need. It will be automatically available for REST. If you haven't created an extension yet, i suggest you go to the page http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Create+a+Module+Extension. It's quite straightforward with civix installed.

The table you need to check in the database is civicrm_mailing_group

answered Feb 02 '15 at 14:33

samuelsov

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Thanks samuelsov, I hadn't noticed the gist which is helpful, though I had seen the thread. Sadly, my initial attempt at setting the groups/include parameter wasn't successful, so I'm going in with the debugger on the Civi side to see what's going on. – rivimey Feb 04 '15 at 10:14
The problem I'm seeing is that the structure groups[include] = array(id) is transformed into groups=include when the parameters are transformed into the HTTP POST request (in my case, by the Python requests module). Thus the group id never reaches Civi. – rivimey Feb 04 '15 at 11:59
Not sure about that, but when playing with api explorer at http://yourwebsite.org/civicrm/api/explorer, the proposed syntax use json so something like : /sites/all/modules/contrib/civicrm/extern/rest.php?entity=Mailing&action=create&json={"name":"the name","subject":"the subject","groups.include":[10,11]}&api_key=yoursitekey&key=yourkey – samuelsov Feb 05 '15 at 14:23

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 09 '15 at 11:37

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To confirm, the problem was that (a) I needed to use groups[include]=array(ids) as mentioned by samuelsov, but also (b) I needed to use the json={...} form of request through REST, because the HTTP params syntax doesn't support nested data.

answered Feb 09 '15 at 11:37

rivimey

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Adding recipient Groups to a CiviCRM Mailing via REST.. how?

2 Answers2