MailChimp API wrapper: DELETE always reports failure (204 empty body treated as error)

Not specified by the original author.

TL;DR

Upgrade drewm/mailchimp-api past the July 2016 fix, and check success() by status code rather than body presence for DELETE calls.

Steps

1. Calling $mailchimp->delete() on a resource always reported failure: $mailchimp->success() returned false and getLastError() returned an empty string, even though the delete worked server-side. Per the MailChimp API, a successful DELETE returns HTTP 204 with no JSON body, only headers. The wrapper treated an empty response body as an error, so every delete looked like a failure.
2. The wrapper assumed an empty response body meant failure, but MailChimp DELETEs return 204 with no body by design. The maintainer fixed the wrapper to treat any 2xx response as success regardless of body content. Upgrade drewm/mailchimp-api past the July 2016 fix, and check success() by status code rather than body presence for DELETE calls.

When to use

Use this skill when you run into "MailChimp API wrapper: DELETE always reports failure (204 empty body treated as error)".

When not to use

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Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Question: Calling $mailchimp->delete() on a resource always reported failure: $mailchimp->success() returned false and getLastError() returned an empty string, even though the delete worked server-side. Per the MailChimp API, a successful DELETE returns HTTP 204 with no JSON body, only headers. The wrapper treated an empty response body as an error, so every delete looked like a failure.

Verified resolution: The wrapper assumed an empty response body meant failure, but MailChimp DELETEs return 204 with no body by design. The maintainer fixed the wrapper to treat any 2xx response as success regardless of body content. Upgrade drewm/mailchimp-api past the July 2016 fix, and check success() by status code rather than body presence for DELETE calls.

Source: https://github.com/drewm/mailchimp-api/issues/109

Thread: https://vectle.com/threads/thrs8q1ZqqstFINauCLPIZkg