API v2 Release Notes | June 2013

We are planning a software update to the Constant Contact v2 API on June 7, 2013. There are no major changes happening in this release, and current v2 integrations should not require any changes. We have fixed several bugs, and added functionality – we’ve included the full details of these changes here.

New Features

Ability to Retrieve System Generated Lists added to Contacts Collection

Use the new status query parameter in the Contacts Collection API  to retrieve the following system generated contact lists:

  • ACTIVE
  • OPTOUT
  • REMOVED
  • UNCONFIRMED

New modified_since Query Parameter Makes Syncing Easier

We’ve made it easier for you to sync contacts and contact lists by adding the modified_since query parameter. This allows you to query the following endpoints for items that were modified on or after a specific date:

Contact Tracking API Extended

We’ve added 2 new endpoints to the Contact Tracking API:

Added created_since Query Parameter to Tracking APIs

The created_since query parameter is now supported by all of the Email Campaign and Contact Tracking endpoints.  This allows you to query only for tracking data that occurred on or after a specific date.  Check out the documentation for details.

Bulk Activity API Extended

The Bulk Activity API now supports adding and removing contacts by importing a multi-part message using binary file formats.  Using multi-part message allows for more data to be uploaded in a single request since it no longer has the overhead of JSON formatting.  Supported file types are CSV, TXT, XLS and XLSX. See the detailed documentation for adding and removing contacts for file and API call requirements.

Added permalink_url to Email Campaign API

Permalink is a URL that links to the HTML version of an email campaign.  It now returned in a GET call to the Individual Campaign Resource API. This provides a way to reference, display or parse the content of any sent email campaign at any time. The permalink node is only available for Sent campaigns.

Bug Fixes

We fixed a number of defects, below is a summary of the developer facing ones.  We will have a list of known issues coming soon to better help you understand what we’re working on.

500 Errors – We fixed many 500 errors (Internal Server Error) when sending over specific payloads, including:

  • Updating a Contact with an Empty ID Field
  • Creating a Contact List with a name that is already in used (Contact List name is unique)
  • Creating a Bulk Import request without an Accept header
  • Multiple Contacts related 500s due to internal database issues unrelated to payloads being sent
  • If a single List object is provided instead of the required array of Lists for a Contact, a 500 error was incorrectly returned instead of a JSON Schema error

Mashery API Key Management – fixed multiple defects and typos on the Mashery pages, including:

  • OAuth 1.0 – error with signatures not being compared correctly (fixed in an hot fix week of April 1st)
  • Validation errors when creating an account have been updated to provide detailed error messages .
  • Creating a developer account sometimes returned cryptic errors (fixed in an hot fix week of April 1st).
  • Some typos and incorrect links on the API key creation page and in the API key creation email have been corrected.
  • 404 Error when clicking “Get Access Token” without an API key provided or selected on the I/O Docs page now provides a descriptive error message with instructions on entering the API key.

Miscellaneous other defects:

  • Create an Email Marketing Campaign with a non-US country and no state was incorrectly returning a 400 error and an error message that was not helpful.  The API no longer returns the error, and the error message is no longer valid and was removed.
  • A 409 error was returned when action_by was set to an invalid value during a Contact update; this has been updated to return a 400 error.
  • Documentation has been updated to include a 409 error as possible for a POST on the /contacts and /lists collections.
  • Documentation has been updated to list the correct response for creating a Bulk Activity as a 201 Created.
  • A bug in the v1 (XML) API C# wrapper library that caused incorrect time out errors was fixed and we have updated the library and the GIThub repo.  Developers please update to the latest code/DLLs to avoid any intermittent timeout errors.
  • Post method for Email Campaign API documentation and JSON schema updated so that from_email, reply_to_email, email_content are now required.
  • A bug that altered subject lines with custom fields in email campaigns with XHTML email_content_format has been fixed.
  • The FAQ link provided in the Application Settings section of the Facebook Join My Mailing List application has been corrected.
  • The spam_count property is now included in the email campaign tracking summary report .

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