Develop Reference

Push data to Campaign Monitor using Python

Campaign Monitor is a service where we can send emails to a set of subscribers. We can create multiple lists within Campaign Monitor and add the required users to these lists as subscribers(to whom we can send personalised emails). So, here I am trying to send a set of customers' details like their name, emails, total_bookings, and first_booking to the campaign monitor's list using the API in Python so that I can send emails to this set of users.
More details on campaign monitor: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/v3-3/subscribers/
I am new to using Campaign Monitor. I have searched documentation, a lot of posts and blogs for examples on how to push data with multiple custom fields to Campaign Monitor using Python. By default, a list in Campaign Monitor will have a name and an email that can be added, but I want to add other details for each subscriber(here I want to add total_bookings and first_booking data) and Campaign Monitor provides custom fields to achieve this.
For instance:
I have my data stored in a redshift table named customer_details with the fields name, email, total_bookings, first_booking. I was able to retrieve this data from redshift table using Python with the following code.
# Get the data from the above table:
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("select * from customer_details")
creator_details = cursor.fetchall()
# Now I have the data as a list of sets in creator_details
Now I want to push this data to a list in the Campaign Monitor using API like request.put('https://api.createsend.com/api/../.../..'). But I am not sure on how to do this. Can someone please help me here.

400 indicated invalid parameters
we can first see the request is POST not PUT
so first change requests.put to requests.post
the next thing is that all the variables need to be sent either as www-formdata or as json body data not sure which
and lastly you almost certainly cannot verify with basic auth ... but maybe
something like the following
some_variables = some_values
...
header = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {MY_API_KEY}"}
data = {"email":customer_email,"CustomFields":[{"key":"total_bookings","value":customer_details2}]}
url = f'https://api.createsend.com/api/v3.3/subscribers/{my_list_id}.json'
res = requests.post(url,json=data,headers=header)
print(res.status_code)
try:
print(res.json())
except:
print(res.content)
after looking more into the API docs it looks like this is the expected request
{
"EmailAddress": "subscriber#example.com",
"Name": "New Subscriber",
"MobileNumber": "+5012398752",
"CustomFields": [
{
"Key": "website",
"Value": "http://example.com"
},
{
"Key": "interests",
"Value": "magic"
},
{
"Key": "interests",
"Value": "romantic walks"
}
],
"Resubscribe": true,
"RestartSubscriptionBasedAutoresponders": true,
"ConsentToTrack":"Yes"
}
which we can see has "EmailAddress" not "email" so you would need to do
data = {"EmailAddress":customer_email,"CustomFields":[{"key":"total_bookings","value":customer_details2}]}
Im not sure if all of the fields are required or not ... so you may also need to provide "Name","MobileNumber",Resubscribe",etc
and looking at "Getting Started" it looks like the publish a python package to make interfacing simpler
http://campaignmonitor.github.io/createsend-python/
which makes it as easy as
import createsend
cli = createsend.CreateSend({"api_key":MY_API_KEY})
cli.subscriber.add(list_id,"user#email.com","John Doe",custom_fields,True,"No")
(which I found here https://github.com/campaignmonitor/createsend-python/blob/master/test/test_subscriber.py#L70)

Extract specific JSON field from Twitter streaming API using Python

I am using Twitter's streaming API code (found here). I am able to get my desired output which is a series of filtered results. However, I specifically need to assign the 'text' field from the JSON result to a variable and I am unable to come up with the right way to do it.
I have isolated the part of the code that returns the streaming data and display it in the terminal when I run it:
for response_line in response.iter_lines():
if response_line:
json_response = json.loads(response_line)
print(json.dumps(json_response, indent=4, sort_keys=True))
What I need is to just get the text part of the tweet that is returned. Here's an output example, noting I only need to set a variable - twitterVariable to the "text" result:
{
"data": {
"id": "125855555555",
"text": "hello this is a test"
},
"matching_rules": [
{
"id": 1234567890,
"tag": ""
}
]
}

As you have already loaded the response into dict object of python, you can use key to get the text field as below:
twitter_variable = json_response['data']['text']

How to validate JSON request body before sending PUT request in python

It's when I send a PUT request to my API endpoint from python with a JSON request body I receive empty request body, because sometimes It's containing special characters which is not supported by JSON.
How can I sanitize my JSON before sending my request?
I've tried with stringify and parsing json before I sent my request!
profile = json.loads(json.dumps(profile))
My example invalid json is:
{
"url": "https://www.example.com/edmund-chand/",
"name": "Edmund Chand",
"current_location": "FrankfurtAmMainArea, Germany",
"education": [],
"skills": []
}
and My expected validated json should be:
{
"url": "https://www.example.com/edmund-chand/",
"name": "Edmund Chand",
"current_location": "Frankfurt Am Main Area, Germany",
"education": [],
"skills": []
}

If you're looking for something quick to sanitize json data for limited fields i.e. current_location, you can try something like the following below:
def sanitize(profile):
profile['current_location'] = ', '.join([val.strip() for val in profile['current_location'].split(',')])
return profile
profile = sanitize(profile)
The idea here is that you would write code to sanitize each bits in that function and send it your api or throw exception if invalid etc.
For more robust validation, you can consider using jsonschema package. More details here.
With that package you can validate strings and json schema more flexibly.
Example taken from the package readme:
from jsonschema import validate
# A sample schema, like what we'd get from json.load()
schema = {
"type" : "object",
"properties" : {
"url" : {"type" : "string", "format":"uri"},
"current_location" : {"type" : "string", "maxLength":25, "pattern": "your_regex_pattern"},
},
}
# If no exception is raised by validate(), the instance is valid.
validate(instance=profile, schema=schema)
You can find more infor and types of available validation for strings here.

Thank you #Rithin for your solution but that one seems more coupled with one field of the whole JSON.
I found a solution to replace it with below example code which works for any field:
profile = json.loads(json.dumps(profile).replace("\t", " "))

Updating Zapier Storage programmatically

I have been working with the Zapier storage api through the store.zapier.com endpoint and have been successful at setting and retrieving values. However I have recently found a need to store more complex information that I would like to update over time.
The data I am storing at the moment looks like the following:
{
"task_id_1": {"google_id": "google_id_1", "due_on": "2018-10-24T17:00:00.000Z"},
"task_id_2": {"google_id": "google_id_2", "due_on": "2018-10-23T20:00:00.000Z"},
"task_id_3": {"google_id": "google_id_3", "due_on": "2018-10-25T21:00:00.000Z"},
}
What I would like to do is update the "due_on" child value of any arbitrary task_id_n without having to delete and add it again. Reading the API information at store.zapier.com I see you can send a patch request combined with a specific action to have better control over the stored data. I attempt to use the patch request and the "set_child_value" action as follows:
def update_child(self, parent_key, child_key, child_value):
header = self.generate_header()
data = {
"action" : "set_child_value",
"data" : {
"key" : parent_key,
"value" : {child_key : child_value}
}
}
result = requests.patch(self.URL, headers=header, json=data)
return result
When I send this request Zapier responds with a 200 status code but the storage is not updated. Any ideas what I might be missing?

Zapier Store doesn't seem to be validating the request body past the "action" and "data" fields.
When you make a request with the "data" field set to an array, you trigger a validation error that describes the schema for the data field (What a way to find documentation for an API! smh).
In the request body, the data field schema for "set_child_value" action is:
{
"action" : {
"enum": [
"delete",
"increment_by",
"set_child_value",
"list_pop",
"set_value_if",
"remove_child_value",
"list_push"
]
},
"data" : {
"key" : {
"type": "object"
},
"values" : {
"type": "object"
}
}
}
Note that it's "values" and not "value"

I was able to update specific child values by modifying my request from a PATCH to a PUT. I had to do away with the data structure of:
data = {
"action" : "set_child_value",
"data" : {
"key" : parent_key,
"value" : {child_key : child_value}
}
and instead send it along as:
data = {
parent_key : {child_key : child_value}
}
My updated request looks like:
def update_child(self, parent_key, child_key, child_value):
header = self.generate_header()
data = {
parent_key : {child_key : child_value}
}
result = requests.put(self.URL, headers=header, json=data)
return result
Never really resolved the issue with the patch method I was attempting before, it does work for other Zapier storage methods such as "pop_from_list" and "push_to_list". Anyhow this is a suitable solution for anyone who runs into the same problem.

How to build Python Lambda for Alexa skill with sequence of statements?

I am building Alexa skill for my application. When your ask's 'what is my account status?' this intent return sequence of statements related to user's account. API gives following response
response = [{
..
text: 'Total orders are 41, Delivered 28'
..
},
{
..
text: 'Today orders are 12, Delivered 2'
..
},
{}]
How to build response sequence based on API response?
With this intent, I get the response from API with set statements Alexa should prompt each statement one by one. If the user said 'next' in between any of the statement while Alexa prompting then it goes to next statement in the response array.

First when user says "what is my account status?" your intent will be called and you will get response in a list where in the first call you will display 0th item.
API Result:
response = [{
..
text: 'Total orders are 41, Delivered 28'
..
},
{
..
text: 'Today orders are 12, Delivered 2'
..
},
{}]
You need to store information in Session attributes, like intent name, index which you displayed (0 in case of first call) etc.
Now you need to setup one more intent which will be triggered on keywords like next. In the code you will check values of session attributes and make your response according to the values. For example you would want to check previous intent name, previous index. If all is fine you will modify the session attributes and respond to user.
Hope it helps.

Since you mentioned Python, I would suggest to take a look at Flask-ask, which provides you with two main responses type: statement and question.
As sid8491 mentioned, you will need to store info in sessions to keep track of which response (from json) needs to be returned. You can use redis for this purpose, using this python library.
Assuming the json response is stored in db (or somewhere), and can be accessed in a list, let's say your interaction model looks something like this:
{
"languageModel": {
"intents": [
{
"name": "NextIntent",
"samples": ["next", "tell me more"]
},
{
"name": "StopIntent",
"samples": ["stop"]
},
{
"name": "StatusIntent",
"samples": ["what is my account status"]
}
],
"invocationName": "orders"
}
}
You can use following steps (using redis and flask-ask for this example):
on 'StatusIntent', store session and return first response:
redis.set("session_key", 0)
return statement(response[0]) # assuming responses are stored in a list
on 'NextIntent', get value stored in session, if present return next response
value = redis.get("session_key")
if not value: # session is expired
return statement("I don't understand")
redis.set("session_key", int(value)+1)
return statement(response[int(value)+1])
on 'StopIntent', remove "session_key" from redis
redis.delete("session_key")
return statement("Ok. I am here if you need me.")
It's not the actual code but simply intended to give you an idea. Hope it helps.
:)