What is the SDK?
The dotMailer SDK is a library that encapsulates the SOAP dotMailer API into something that is easier for the developer to use. Written in C# and targetting the .net 2 framework, the dotMailer SDK runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux (via the Mono runtime).
Benefits of the SDK
- No need to mess around with web references or WCF services
- The SDK performs username and password validation automatically
- No need to always provide the username and password to every call
- Compatible with all versions of .Net from v2 onwards
- Managed importing of contacts, the SDK sorts and batch uploads contacts
- Handles paged API methods
- The SDK supports the serialization/deserialization of API objects to XML and JSON
- Smart objects, they will go and get data from the webservice, on demand
- API calls have been grouped into sections for clarity
- Valued added functions, such as tracking the number of web calls used during a session, contact import progress as percentage, and helper objects that poll import progress
- Multi-platform development
Location of SDK and adapters
The SDK itself is closed source, but is given away for free.
SDK 'adapters' to perform specific tasks are available open-source via the CodePlex website. Current adapters include:
- Google Contact Importer
The first adapter is an example of a small stand alone program that imports contacts from a Gmail account to a dotMailer address book, via the SDK. The code shows how to read contacts from Google, and how to implement the IDmContact interface, and have those contacts transferred to an exisiting or freshly created dotMailer address book. Note: Remember to only import those contacts that you have permission to send to!
Why have yet another API?
The existing dotMailer API is a SOAP based web service, which means that in order to do simple things with dotMailer, a lot of work can sometimes be required.
The existing dotMailer API is a SOAP based web service, which means that in order to do simple things with dotMailer, a lot of work can sometimes be required.
- Add a web reference to their project
- Create an instance of the soap client
- Call a method of the API (remembering to provide their API username and password in every method call)
- Handle multiple calls to the API to get all of the data required
Using the SDK the developer just has to:
- Add reference to the SDK in their project
- Call one method to get an SDK object, only having to pass the API username and password to the SDK, once
- Call one method to retrieve all of the required data