Similar to the getInfoByUserRef API call, findBySystemField returns one record only in the response.

The curl command as displayed on the ManyChat API Swagger is:

curl -X GET "https://api.manychat.com/fb/subscriber/findBySystemField?phone=1234567890&email=mail%40example.com" -H "accept: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer 0"

The ‘0’ in the call above must be replaced by your API key and phone OR email must contain the values you are looking for.

Why would you need this?

In essence all the methods to get your subscriber data are the same. Some return a single record, others return multiple users. We spoke about use cases such as customer support, user (order) status, segmentation. I’m sure you can come up with a use case for your personal situation as well. Please do share!

The response for this API is the same as with getInfoByUserRef, a single user is a data object. There is a similar limitation, as seen in the ManyChat Swagger:

Limit: 100 queries per second.

The way around the limitation is to pause your script after 100 records have been retrieved and go again right after. You can use the PHP function sleep() or usleep() for that. In a real case, chances are you won’t need more than 100 queries per second though.

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "id": "string",
    "page_id": "string",
    "user_refs": "[{ 'user_ref':'-1543835812530302162', 'opted_in':'2018-12-03T11:17:54+00:00' }]",
    "first_name": "string",
    "last_name": "string",
    "name": "string",
    "gender": "string",
    "profile_pic": "string",
    "locale": "string",
    "language": "string",
    "timezone": "string",
    "live_chat_url": "string",
    "last_input_text": "string",
    "optin_phone": true,
    "phone": "string",
    "optin_email": true,
    "email": "string",
    "subscribed": "'2018-07-02T00:00:00+02:00'",
    "last_interaction": "'2018-07-02T00:00:00+02:00'",
    "last_seen": "'2018-07-02T00:00:00+03:00'",
    "is_followup_enabled": "true",
    "custom_fields": [
      {
        "id": 0,
        "name": "string",
        "type": "text",
        "description": "string",
        "value": "'string', 123, true, '2018-07-18', '2018-07-02T07:45:00+03:00'"
      }
    ],
    "tags": [
      {
        "id": 0,
        "name": "string"
      }
    ]
  }
}

How do we use this in our own system?

What do we need for this to work?

• The API /fb/subscriber/findBySystemField
• a script to translate the response JSON into any readable format for your project
• the phone number or email address to look for

Let’s add our new function to our class file in classes/manychat.class.php.

    /**
     * 
     * @param type $systemField
     * @param type $systemFieldValue
     * @param type $mc_api
     * @return boolean
     */
    function findSubscriberBySystemField($systemField, $systemFieldValue, $mc_api)
    {

        $ch            = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.manychat.com/fb/subscriber/findBySystemField?" . $systemField . "=" . $systemFieldValue);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'GET');
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        $headers       = [
            'Authorization: Bearer ' . preg_replace("/^(\w+\s+)/", "", $mc_api),
            'Content-Type: application/json',
            'Accept: application/json'
        ];
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
        $server_output = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        $json_obj  = json_decode($server_output);
        $good_call = $json_obj->status;

        if ($good_call == "success") {
            return $json_obj->data;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

The PHP file

The complete PHP file to call the method (function) in your class file is as follows. We included a check for a true result just in case there are zero users in the given search. Also, I added a little HTML code to tidy it up in the output.

<?php

/*
 * Load the ManyChat Config File
 */
require_once './config.inc.php';

/*
 * Get the Subscriber Information by SystemField
 */

$systemField      = "phone"; // phone|email
$systemFieldValue = urlencode("+31651524964");

$subscriber_bysystemfield = $mc->findSubscriberBySystemField($systemField, $systemFieldValue, $mc_api);

if ($subscriber_bysystemfield) {
    $subscriber_name = $subscriber_bysystemfield->name;
    $subscriber_pic  = $subscriber_bysystemfield->profile_pic;
    echo "<img src=\"" . $subscriber_pic . "\" align=\"left\" style=\"padding:15px;width:150px;\">";
    echo $subscriber_name;
} else {
    echo "No info available for user with " . $systemField . " " . urldecode($systemFieldValue);
}

Let’s see what our current setup returns as a result.