API User Guide, Sample Code, Gems, etc.

The Chargify API allows you to keep the customer purchase flow on your own site, while passing the billing information to us for processing. The API attempts to conform to the RESTful design principles. It accepts method calls via HTTP and returns responses as JSON or XML.

In addition to querying, creating, and modifying resources such as your Customers and Subscriptions, you can also use the Chargify API to "authenticate" your users. In this way, you can determine whether a particular user has access to a particular resource on your site. In other words, does User X have access to Plan Y?

The Chargify API also supports callbacks to your own site, so you may be notified of important changes. This allows you to cache subscription data on your site, only making new requests for subscription data from us when we have notified you of a change.

API Wrappers, Sample Code, Gems, etc.

The following wrappers are available for the API. If you have usage examples or code libraries in other languages, we will happily accept your input and can help you host the repositories.

Please note that these samples were graciously given to us by our users, but we don't offer official support for them. Of course, we help where we can, but our internal knowledge is Ruby.

.Net

• http://chargify.codeplex.com: A .Net API wrapper and complete sample app by one of our active beta testers (Kori Francis, @Djbyter)

Java / Scala

• http://github.com/IntroSpectrum/chargify-scala: A Scala API wrapper by one of our active beta testers.

PHP

• http://github.com/jforrest/Chargify-PHP-Client: A PHP API wrapper from Jason at RigBooks
• http://github.com/lewsid/chargify_api_php: A PHP API wrapper by one of our active beta testers.
• http://github.com/abraham/chargify: Sample PHP app by Abraham Williams. http://abrah.am, @abraham
• http://chargeigniter.com: CodeIgniter PHP code by Kyle Anderson

Python

• http://github.com/getyouridx/pychargify: A Python API wrapper by one of our active beta testers.
• http://github.com/hindsightlabs/chargify-python: A simple Python API wrapper.

Ruby/ActiveResource (Rails)

• http://github.com/grasshopperlabs/chargify_api_ares: This is the "official" gem by the Chargify team. It uses ActiveResource, which is built into Rails, and is a good option for easy integration.

• http://github.com/pengwynn/chargify: This is a Chargify gem that uses HTTParty. It was created by @pengwynn, who is one of our active beta testers. It has tests by using a Chargify "mock".

• http://github.com/jsmestad/chargify: This is a Chargify gem by @jsmestad, another of our active users.

Resources Available

The following resources are available via the API

Response Codes

An HTTP Response Code is sent for every request to the API, and will be one of the following

Response Data

Response data is sent as either XML or JSON, depending on the type of data requested.

Request Data

POST and PUT request data may be formatted as XML (application/xml) or JSON (application/json).

When sending data to Chargify (PUT and POST method requests), make sure you specify the HTTP Content-Type header accordingly or else you will trigger Cross Site Request Forgery protections.

For example, with curl:

curl -u <api_key>:x -H Content-Type:application/json --verbose --data-binary @subscription.json https://subdomain.chargify.com/subscriptions.json

When performing requests that do not send data to Chargify (i.e. GET or DELETE method requests) the type of data requested should be inferred from the URL suffix (i.e. either .xml or .json). If you are having difficulty, it cannot hurt to specify the type of data you accept via the HTTP Accept header, i.e.

curl -u <api_key>:x -H Accept:application/json --verbose https://subdomain.chargify.com/subscriptions.json