Campaign Monitor API Connection Failure With CFHTTP And GZIP Compression
Posted June 2, 2009 at 9:01 AM by Ben Nadel
To manage mailing lists for clients and personal projects, I generally use Campaign Monitor. Its SOAP-based API has many different methods for subscribing, resubscribing, and unsubscribing email users to various client lists. The API interaction was great for a long time and then suddenly, a few weeks ago, I started getting "Connection Failure" on all of my ColdFusion CFHTTP requests.
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I have no idea what the heck was going on. I could connect to the WSDL file just fine using the browser so I couldn't figure out why it was suddenly failing with ColdFusion's CFHTTP request. After a bit of Googling, I came across a post by Dan G. Switzer, II that discussed this very topic: CFHTTP "Connection Failures" issues with Gzip. In the post, Dan discussed that the problem comes from the fact that a connection failure in CFHTTP might be caused by the use of GZIP compression on the target server (which CFHTTP cannot handle).
I checked the compression in FireBug to confirm that this was, in fact, the case:
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To fix this incompatibility, Dan gave a few different options. The one I ended up going with was passing in a no-compression CFHttpParam header value with my CFHTTP request:
- <!--- Post SOAP data to campaign monitor. --->
- <cfhttp
- url="......"
- method="get"
- result="objSOAPPost">
-
- <cfhttpparam
- type="header"
- name="accept-encoding"
- value="no-compression"
- />
-
- <!--- More params go here. --->
-
- </cfhttp>
Adding that CFHttpParam did the trick! Thanks Dan!
Reader Comments
You're welcome! :)
I actually just ran across another issue that I'm getting ready to blog about. This one wasn't about GZIP, but redirect rules.
@Dan,
Awesome. We'll keep my eyes open for your post.
Here's some other things to watch out for if you're using CFHTTP to call a server which has some mod_rewrite rules:
I had the same issue. Fixed it the same way. Campaign Monitor confirmed they had turned on IIS compression to speed the transfers. More info on the compression issue here:
http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm/2004/7/28/20040729
@Aaron,
Seems odd that they would all of a sudden change this. Although, I guess its not a problem for most people? Maybe they sent out an "update" email that I just never saw.
Hi Ben - On the CM forum, in a post about their ColdFusion API wrapper they recommend contacting you, but why don't they promote it? I am new to CM, so still learning my way around. Is there specific info on the API available?
Thanks for your help!
mp/m
@Mike,
No problem. I don't use CM that much, but if you need any help, let me know.
Thanks for the offer Ben. Just trying to see if they plan on (re-)releasing an API wrapper for CF. In the meantime I was able to get what I needed done - adding a checkbox to an existing form to sign up for the newsletter - without any additional code.
mp/m
hi!
Just wondering if, in the meanwhile, there is some kind of basic coldfusion wrapper for the Campaign Monitor API. Cant find anything on their site.
Ben or Mike? Any pointers?
thanks!
Bart
@Bart,
I did a Google search for "Campaing Monitor cfc" and there appears to be some things you might follow up with. I have not used a wrapper personally; I've only used the "subscribe" method, so no real need for a whole CFC.
@Bart,
If you can't find anything good, I could probably put together the basis of something.
@Ben
I just approached Jon with the question how far along his CM wrapper is. If i get anything i will keep you posted.
thanks!
Bart
The server I tried to access does not have gzip available. When I checked in the header response, it said:
Content-Encoding: deflate
(They are different aren't they?)
But that doesn't matter, what matters is your trick solved my problem too! :-)
Thanks Ben & Dan,
Khoa
@Vinh,
Heck yeah! I don't fully understand the various encoding types, but I am glad this worked for you.
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