How to ping the MailChimp v3 API

In version 2.0 of MailChimp’s API, there was a helper/ping endpoint, which is useful for automated monitoring (e.g. Nagios checks.)

This no longer exists in v3.0, which is quite a bit different.

Just to share the recommendation their API support team gave me, use the API Root resource instead, and assuming you don’t need all the data it returns, just append ?fields=account_name and it will only send that specific field back.

I’d recommend logging the HTTP response code too and checking it’s 200, e.g. in PHP:

$http_status = curl_getinfo( $ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE );

Fixing the MailChimp API SSL certificate

Here’s a StackOverflow answer by me for anyone who sees this error:

SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

…when using the MailChimp API.

The problem is due to MC using a root certificate that’s been removed from the Mozilla certificate bundle (you’re most likely to see it on Debian systems.)

This is a safer way to work around the problem that rolling all your certificates back to 2014 or disabling SSL certificate verification entirely.  You also won’t need to set cURL options or edit your php.ini.

Also covered: how to ‘ping’ the MailChimp API to check it’s working.