We’ve improved our subscriber_edit API method to allow for updating only a portion of subscriber details, rather than supplying the entire subscriber record for each update.
The default behavior of subscriber_edit remains the same – you must build the entire subscriber record each time you save any updates associated with that record. Here are example POST parameters that you could pass:

Array (
  'id' => 1,
  'email' => 'john@doe.com',
  'first_name' => 'John',
  'last_name' => 'Doe',
  'field' => Array (
    '2,4' => 'field value',
  ),
  'p' => Array (
    '3' => 3,
    '5' => 5,
  ),
  'status' => Array (
    '3' => 1,
    '5' => 1,
  ),
)

With potentially lots of lists and custom field values, this array becomes very large when you often only want to update a single value pertaining to the subscriber.
In these cases you can include the overwrite parameter in the API request URL. Set it to 0 to turn off automatic overwrite.
Here is an example API request URL for subscriber_edit:

http://mysite.com/admin/api.php
?api_user=admin
&api_pass_h=098f6bjdsa87sadhsj4e832627b4f6
&api_action=subscriber_edit
&api_output=serialize
&overwrite=0

If you include the overwrite parameter, it can be value 1 or 0. Leaving it out defaults to 1.
Now here is your modified POST parameters:

Array (
  'id' => 1,
  'p' => Array (
    '6' => 6,
  ),
  'status' => Array (
    '6' => 1,
  ),
)

Here we are only appending this new list (ID 6) for the subscriber record, and all other details are left alone (if overwrite=0). Please keep in mind if you leave out some parameters that have dependencies (such as p and status), you might receive an error or have incomplete data being saved.
The only required parameter is id. Here are a list of dependencies:

  • p and status are dependent on each other.
  • first_name requires either p or first_name_list.
  • last_name required either p or last_name_list.

Let us know if you have any problems with this new functionality!