---
title: "Introducing: EmailLabsClient"
date: 2008-07-31T00:00:00+00:00
draft: false
canonical_url: https://www.viget.com/articles/introducing-email-labs-client/
---

On my latest project, the client is using
[EmailLabs](http://www.emaillabs.com/) to manage their mailing lists. To
simplify interaction with their system, we've created
[EmailLabsClient](https://github.com/vigetlabs/email_labs_client/tree/master),
a small Ruby client for the EmailLabs API. The core of the program is
the `send_request` method:

```ruby
def self.send_request(request_type, activity)
  xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new :target => (input = '')
  
  xml.instruct!
  
  xml.DATASET do
    xml.SITE_ID SITE_ID
    yield xml
  end
  
  Net::HTTP.post_form(
    URI.parse(ENDPOINT),
    :type => request_type,
    :activity => activity,
    :input => input
  )
end 
```

Then you can make API requests like this:

```ruby
def self.subscribe_user(mailing_list, email_address)
  send_request('record', 'add') do |body|
    body.MLID mailing_list
    body.DATA email_address, :type => 'email'
  end
end 
```

If you find yourself needing to work with an EmailLabs mailing list,
check it out. At the very least, you should get a decent idea of how to
interact with their API. It's up on
[GitHub](https://github.com/vigetlabs/email_labs_client/tree/master), so
if you add any functionality, send those patches our way.