API Overview

• Adding new API resources.
• Adding new attributes to existing API responses.
• Changing the order of attributes in existing API responses.
• Adding new API methods for a resource.
• Adding new 'optional' input params to existing API methods.
• Adding new attributes to existing API responses.
• Making an input param 'required' in API methods (very rare).
• Adding new event types.

# creates a subscription with customer information and billing details.
curl  https://{site}.chargebee.com/api/v1/subscriptions \
     -u {site_api_key}:\
     -d plan_id="no_trial" \
     -d customer[first_name]="John" \
     -d customer[last_name]="Doe" \
     -d customer[email]="john@user.com" \
     -d billing_address[first_name]="John" \
     -d billing_address[last_name]="Doe" \
     -d billing_address[line1]="PO Box 9999" \
     -d billing_address[city]="Walnut" \
     -d billing_address[state]="California" \
     -d billing_address[zip]="91789" \
     -d billing_address[country]="US" \
     -d customer[auto_collection]="off"

# creates a subscription with customer information and billing details.
curl  https://{site}.chargebee.com/api/v1/subscriptions \
     -u {site_api_key}:\
     -d plan_id="no_trial" \
     -d customer[first_name]="John" \
     -d customer[last_name]="Doe" \
     -d customer[email]="john@user.com" \
     -d billing_address[first_name]="John" \
     -d billing_address[last_name]="Doe" \
     -d billing_address[line1]="PO Box 9999" \
     -d billing_address[city]="Walnut" \
     -d billing_address[state]="California" \
     -d billing_address[zip]="91789" \
     -d billing_address[country]="US" \
     -d customer[auto_collection]="off"

Sample Response [ JSON ]

Some of the resources have a corresponding details page in the Chargebee's admin console. In some cases you might want to construct the admin console url for easy access from your app (or from exported xls sheets). As the admin console urls are based on internal ids you need to construct the url in the below given format.

Here is an example of a constructed url for a subscription with id 123xyz

• Accessing the constructed url in a browser will redirect it to the details page.
• The login page will be shown if the user has not yet logged-in into Chargebee's admin console.
• Not all resources will have the corresponding details page. To know if it is supported, please look at the cURL documentation under the retrieve operation for that resource.
• Do not store the redirected internal id based url as it may change.

Chargebee supports billing in 100+ currencies.

Take a look at the list of supported currencies here.

Handling Currency Units

While specifying amount in any currency, you need to provide the amount in the smallest unit of that currency. For example, to specify an amount of $1.50, you would set amount=150 (i.e. 150 cents).

For zero decimal currencies (currencies that do not have decimal units), however, you need to provide the amount in the regular denomination. For example, to specify an amount of ¥15, you would set amount=15 (i.e. 15 yens).

Chargebee currently supports below zero-decimal currencies:

• KRW - South Korean Won
• JPY - Japanese Yen
• XAF - Central African CFA Franc
• XOF - West African CFA Franc

Multicurrency Support

With our Multicurrency support, you will be able to process transactions in additional currencies apart from your site's Base currency.

Once Multicurrency support is enabled, the API methods listed below will throw an error as currency_code is required for these methods to work and the same is not supported in the V1 version. So upgrade to our latest version (V2) to be able to pass currency_code input parameter to these methods in Multicurrency mode.

• Customer related methods
• Add account credits to a customer
• Deduct account credits from a customer
• Set account credits for a customer
• Invoice related methods
• Create an invoice
• Create invoice for charge
• Product Configuration related methods
• Create a plan
• Update a plan
• Create an addon
• Update an addon
• Create a coupon

Chargebee supports configuring multiple gateway accounts for a gateway type (eg: you can configure multiple Authorize.net accounts to process multiple currencies).

If you have multiple gateway accounts for a gateway type, the API methods listed below will throw an error as gateway_account_id is required for these methods to work and the same is not supported in the V1 version. So upgrade to our latest version (V2) to be able to pass gateway_account_id input parameter to these methods.

• Customer related methods
• Create a customer
• Update payment method for a customer
• Card related methods
• Update card for a customer
• Switch gateway
• Subscription related methods
• Create a subscription
• Update a subscription
• Hosted page related methods
• Checkout new subscription
• Checkout existing subscription
• Update payment method

Chargebee supports multiple payment methods/sources for a customer. So a customer can have a Card and a Paypal Account linked to them, or they can have multiple cards. Moreover, you can mark one of them as Primary and one as Backup payment source.

The purpose of a Backup payment source is that if a charge made via the Primary payment source fails, then the backup payment source will be automatically used for processing the transaction.

Updating a payment source:

1. To update the Primary payment source for a customer:
• Use any of the create payment source APIs with 'replace_primary_payment_source' set to 'true'. This will update the payment source and make it the Primary payment source for the customer.
2. To update alternate payment sources:
• Delete the payment source that you want to update
• Create a payment source for the customer using any of the create payment source APIs

An optional parameter, payment_source_id, is available in the following APIs:

• Subscription APIs

If you want to attach a particular payment source to a specific subscription, then pass the parameter in the following APIs:

• Create subscription for customer
• Import subscription for customer
• Override Billing Profile
• Invoice APIs

Pass this parameter in the following APIs to collect the payment using a specific payment source:

• Create an invoice
• Create invoice for charge
• Create invoice for addon
• Collect payment for an invoice

HTTP status code is used to indicate success or failure of an API call. The body of the response contains the details of the error in JSON format.

Sample error response:

Below is the sample error that is returned for 'create subscription' api call when the plan referred in the plan_id parameter is not present. The returned http status code will be 404.

Http Status Codes

The standard http status codes used are

• 2XX The response code in this range implies the API call has succeeded.
• 3XX This range is not used currently.
• 4XX response codes indicate failure due to wrong input (i.e, client) side. As the usable list of http codes in the 4xx range is limited we predominantly use the 400 ( BAD REQUEST ) error code for client side errors.
• 5XX response codes indicate API request was valid but failed due to bugs on the Chargebee server side.

Error Attributes

Note: There would be additional deprecated attributes (like error_code) which are present to support older versions of the libraries.

Error handling recommendations

Chargebee will return the first encountered error when validating the API call. Hence we strongly recommend you to validate the user input on your side before calling Chargebee's API. Otherwise you will have to show the mistakes one at a time for the user to correct it before proceeding to the next.

There are cases where you have to depend on Chargebee's validation for handling errors like coupon code validation or VAT validations. In such cases check for the specific param and api_error_code combination to show proper error message to your users.

The following are the list of codes grouped based on type.

Note: 'New' codes might get added (though additions are very rare). If you are handling for specific codes also ensure that there is a default block for handling unknown(/new) error codes.

These errors may occur when trying to store the payment method details(such as card, paypal, ACH etc) or when trying to collect a payment. These errors should be handled and appropriate message should be shown to the user. The type attribute in the error response is sent as payment.

The following errors are caused due to invalid request. In most cases the errors should occur only during the development phase. The type attribute in the error response is sent as invalid_request.

These errors are returned when the request was valid but the requested operation could not be completed. These errors should occur very rarely. You generally need not handle them specifically other than showing a generic error message to your users. The type attribute in the error response is sent as operation_failed.

Most of these errors occur due to improper API environment setup in your server or changes to the site's configuration. The type attribute is not sent in the error response.

Sometimes you would want to disable emails or webhooks for the events that are generated for a particular api call. Typically you would need this when you are migrating customers from your system to Chargebee via api. One option would be to disable all the emails(/webhooks) for all events during the import process. But then you would still want to send emails for new customers who are signing up.
Chargebee supports custom http headers on each api request that allow you to control the actions that are triggered on the events generated by that particular api call.

• To skip all actions to be done on the events pass the header chargebee-event-actions with value all-disabled
• To skip only emails pass the header chargebee-event-email with value all-disabled
• Similarly to skip only webhooks pass chargebee-event-webhook with value all-disabled

        curl  https://mysite.chargebee.com/api/v1/customers \
     -H chargebee-event-actions:all-disabled \
     -u myapikey: \
     -d customer[email]="john@user.com" \
    

Passing user details like IP address, email address and Device information from your website to Chargebee is always useful. IP address information is routed to the payment gateway (where it will be validated against active fraud detection filters), used for EU tax validation, referral integration and event reports. Email addresses and Device information, even more ubiquitous, are used for identification. Chargebee supports http headers to send user details.

Use the following headers to send user details across:

• For the IP address of the customer where the request originated - chargebee-request-origin-ip; where an example is 192.168.1.2.
• For details of the customer - chargebee-request-origin-user; where an example is user@example.com.
• For the device from which the customer has made the request - chargebee-request-origin-device; where an example is Android.

 curl  https://mysite.chargebee.com/api/v1/customers \
     -H chargebee-request-origin-ip:192.168.1.2\
     -H chargebee-request-origin-user:user@example.com\
     -H chargebee-request-origin-device:Android\
     -u myapikey: \
     -d customer[email]="john@user.com" \

Chargebee gives you the option of creating custom fields to track additional information about Customers and their Subscriptions. You can create custom fields for customers, subscriptions, plans, and addons. Once the custom fields are created, they can be added to the hosted checkout pages and invoices. They can be accessed through the web interface, and via the API. More on Custom Fields here.

Sample Request

curl https://{site}.chargebee.com/api/v1/subscriptions \
-u {site_api_key}: \
-d plan_id="basic" \
-d "cf_notes"="sample" \
-d "customer[cf_gender]"="sample"

If you would want to store additional/custom data at a resource's level, you can make use of Meta Data.

For example, if you're a data service provider and would want to store certain features of a particular plan such as "Usage Limit", "Speed within limit", etc., you can have it stored in the Meta data of the Plan.

Meta Data can be passed during the Add/Update operations, for the following resources:

• Subscriptions
• Customers
• Plans
• Addons
• Coupons

Meta Data can only be stored in the JSON format. You can also use nested JSON objects.

Considering the same example as above, if you'd want to store the additional features of a particular data plan here's how the JSON would look:

Tutorials and use case guides for developers can be found here.