Send/Include 'name' field to Mailchimp using API with AJAX - ajax

Question

I need to know how to send the 'name' field to Mailchimp so that it shows the 'name' the user submitted under the name column on the 'subscribers' page in Mailchimp.
The form looks like this:
<div id="email">
<form action="subscribe.php" id="invite" method="POST">
<input type="text" placeholder="Enter your name.." name="name" id="name" class="name" data-validate="validate(name)"/>
<input type="email" placeholder="and your email address.." name="email" id="MCE-email" class="email" data-validate="validate(required, email)"/>
<p>If you agree with the Terms and Privacy, please press the submit button below.</p>
<div class="clear"><input type="submit" value="Submit" name="subscribe" id="mc-embedded-subscribe" class="button"></div>
</form>
<div id="clear"></div>
<div id="result"></div>
</div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#invite').ketchup().submit(function() {
if ($(this).ketchup('isValid')) {
var action = $(this).attr('action');
$.ajax({
url: action,
type: 'POST',
data: {
email: $('#MCE-email').val()
},
success: function(data){
$('#result').html(data).css('color', '#a1a1a1', 'padding', '10px 0px 0px 0px');
},
error: function() {
$('#result').html('Sorry, an error occurred.').css('color', 'white');
}
});
}
return false;
});
});
v</script>
The subscribe.php script looks like this :
<?php
$apiKey = 'MYAPIKEY';
$listId = 'MYLISTID';
$double_optin=false;
$send_welcome=false;
$email_type = 'html';
$email = $_POST['email'];
$name = $_POST['name'];
//replace us2 with your actual datacenter
$submit_url = "http://us5.api.mailchimp.com/1.3/?method=listSubscribe";
$data = array(
'email_address'=>$email,
'apikey'=>$apiKey,
'id' => $listId,
'double_optin' => $double_optin,
'send_welcome' => $send_welcome,
'email_type' => $email_type
);
$payload = json_encode($data);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $submit_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, urlencode($payload));
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
$data = json_decode($result);
if ($data->error){
echo $data->error;
} else {
echo "Thank you for your email. We'll keep you up to date..";
}
?>
The field tag of the 'name' field on my form in Mailchimp is 'NAME'
I hope this is all the information you need and it makes sense..
Thank you greatly.

Answer 1

Going off of the Mailchimp listSubscribe function documentation found here:
http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/1.3/listsubscribe.func.php
You just need to create a merge_vars array that will hold any additional fields associated with the subscribing email. For example:
$merge_vars = array('FNAME'=>'first name', 'LNAME'=>'last name');
And then just pass that array in your $data.