Mailchimp programatic subscription and updates of existing users

Question

I'm using Mailchimp module for user registration and at this page I found a function for registering users programatically:

mailchimp_subscribe (
    $list_id,
    $email,
    array (
        'EMAIL' => $email,
        'FNAME' => $first_name, // fields in your mailchimp list
        'LNAME' => $last_name,
    ),
    false,
    false
)

In my mailchimp account I have defined new field of radio buttons type (field name 'type' with options 'client' and 'expert').

I have 2 questions:

• How should be the 'type' column in mailchimp_subscribe() function specified?
• How could be an existing user in mailchimp programatically updated?

Answer 1

The key in the array can be MERGEX (where Xth field number in MailChimp) or whatever custom tag name you've set in MailChimp (it shows up as *|TAGNAME|*" in MailChimp field settings) . The MailChimp dropdown user fields aren't like Drupal's (with select fields containing a key/value pair); all it needs is the literal display value of option.

mailchimp_subscribe() eventually calls MailchimpLists::addOrUpdateMember() in its dependent library. Thus, the logic of adding/updating is handled for you in the function.

To put that together in the above code snippet:

mailchimp_subscribe(
    $list_id,
    $email,  //Will add or update $email in $list_id based on subscriber status
    array (
        'EMAIL' => $email,
        'FNAME' => $first_name, // fields in your mailchimp list
        'LNAME' => $last_name,
        // Assuming the 'type' field in MailChimp is your 3rd field 
        'MERGE3' => 'client',
    ),
    false,
    false
);