Make name field optional in POST /api/subscribers

[paulrudy]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The POST /api/subscribers API call requires the name field, but this is not always available. Often, for brevity and ease of use, signup forms have only a single field for an email address.

(Related (and closed) issue #525 but that issue was not about the API.)

Describe the solution you'd like

Please make the name field optional in the POST /api/subscribers API call.

[knadh]

Please see this #594 for context on the decision to make name mandatory. In the API, if you don't have a name available, you can just pass the e-mail value as name.

[paulrudy]

Thanks for the quick reply, and I apologize for not finding that issue previously.

I'm not familiar with sprig functions referenced in the docs, but could those be used to adjust for the presence of an email address in the {{ .Subscriber.Name }} field when composing a template?

[knadh]

The issue is a matter of UX. With empty names, the subscriber list on the admin UI will look inconsistent. Most users who end up using the default template will see empty names, causing confusion.

[paulrudy]

Ok, I appreciate your explanation 🙌🏼

[knadh]

0d74619 makes having to submit name via API and in the CSV file optional. If no name is provided, the name part of the e-mail is automatically extracted and assigned.

[ezuk]

This UX choice makes it so that interpolating names into emails ends up being either "Hi Charles" (if a name was provided) or "Hi charlie557z" (or whatever the email is) if a name was not provided.

The latter is exactly the opposite of personalization. The UX impact for the receiver of the mail is alienating. I would rather have an empty list in the admin panel any day.

For now, I've set up our forms to pass the string "there" when no name is provided, so this serves as a fallback ("Hi there" beats "Hi coolperson663").