Announcing the New Constant Contact V2 API, Developer Portal, and Developer Acceleration Tools

Over the past year, we’ve mentioned a few times that we are working on a new version of our API.  It’s been quite a journey since we launched our original public REST API in 2008.  Since then, expectations have changed, technologies have advanced, and our developer community has been vocal about what they want.  They’ve asked for more tools, better data management, and whatever help we can provide to simplify and speed up their integration experience.  We’ve carefully listened, filed away learnings, and are really excited to announce that we’ve turned that into our new V2 API!

What’s new?

Over the past four years, we’ve learned so much about the needs and goals of our developer community.  From resources to documentation to just how it works, you haven’t held back.  Thank you! Your feedback has helped us define some important changes. Here are just a few of the highlights:

• Full JSON support for all payloads
• REST based resource structure
• Wrapper libraries in many common languages
• Automated documentation

As you can see, we’ve taken the feedback you’ve provided and turned it into what we know is one of the best API platforms you’ll get to use.  We’re also excited to announce that we’ve selected Mashery, the leading API management platform, to provide a world-class experience for creating, managing, and monitoring your API keys and integrations.

Release Details

On Monday, we released the first set of API endpoints for the V2 API.  We’re really excited to get developers up and running on this new platform.  We’re by no means done – in fact, we’re just getting started!  So if you need something and it isn’t here yet, let us know!

And now, drum roll please! The meat of the release:

• API coverage of the core Constant Contact Email Marketing tool, including Contacts, Custom Email Campaigns, and Analytics.  This includes many of your requested updates, such as the ability to send tests of email campaigns prior to doing a full send, access to more data per request (retrieve up to 500 Contacts or Analytics in a single GET request!), and improved error messaging.
• JSON support for all payloads.  We heard you loud and clear: XML was not fun!  We agree so we completely rebuilt the API on a JSON stack.  This includes full support for JSON Schema validation, enhanced error messages in a predictable JSON format, and great JSON samples in our documentation.
• Wrapper libraries in many popular languages supported by Constant Contact.  We took the time to make sure we give our developer community the tools they need to get up and running as quickly as possible.  This includes wrapper libraries for all functionality in C# .Net, PHP, Ruby, Objective-C (iOS), and Java (compatible with Android 2.1+).  Even more, we have samples available for common tasks using these libraries to help you get started faster.  Oh, forgot to mention, we also included OAuth 2.0 into the wrappers to help you get through that quickly, too.
• Automated documentation.  We heard from developers that our documentation sometimes missed an update or enhancement. No more!  We’ve included automated documentation built off of our JSON Schema to make sure our documentation is always up to date.  Even more, we included detailed business logic information, required and optional fields, and validation on all of our fields.  No more guess work – it’s all just there.  And if that wasn’t enough, we also provide interactive documentation (I/O Docs) so you can test any endpoint and payload.
• Working with Mashery for world-class API key management.  We wanted to go above and beyond with API key management, so we picked a great company to help us make a better experience.  Now with your MasheryID, you can log in and create new API keys with Constant Contact.  Plus, you get the benefit of the reporting to see how your integrations are being used.  Finally, we added the ability to create OAuth tokens for your API key right in the Mashery management console to get you up and running even faster.  No more setting up an OAuth application; just click the access token button and you’ll have a token in just a couple clicks.

We are really excited to open this up to our developer community.  I’m sure that the integrations you develop will amaze us and really excite the Constant Contact community.  If you have any feedback, please let us know.  We are planning many new features and there will be much more to come this year!

Got a comment? Let us know in the comments section below.