Flexigift Service API

Tutorial: Link a Gift Card to a User

The Flexigift service allows users to pay for their Amazon purchases with third-party gift cards. This tutorial will teach you how to add link a gift card to a user.

Allow 30 minutes to complete this lesson.

Prerequisites

The Flexigift service is up and running.
You are comfortable working with REST interfaces.
A REST client such as cURL, Postman, or Insomnia. This tutorial assumes you are using cURL but use whatever REST client you like.
At least one user and gift card already exist in the system. If they do not, first follow the Add a User and Create a Gift Card tutorials.

Note: This tutorial assumes that the Flexigift service is running at http://localhost:3000. Remember to point to your own host when you adapt the code samples to your own environment.

Overview

The following procedures will teach you how to link a gift card to a user. When you’ve completed the tutorial, the user will be able to use their card for their Amazon.com purchases.

Find your user and gift card IDs

Users and gift cards are associated with each other by their user_id and card_id respectively. The linking of users and gift cards is one to many; that is, a user may have many gift cards, but a gift card may be linked to only one user.

To find your user ID:

Fetch all of the users in the system:
```
 curl http://localhost:3000/users/
```
Find your user and note their id and user_id values.
Also note all of your user’s details. You will need to submit them again when you update your user.

To find your card IDs:

Fetch all of the gift cards in the system:
```
 curl http://localhost:3000/gift_cards
```
Note the id and card_id for the card you want to link to your user.
Also note all of your card’s details. You will need to submit them again when you update your card.

Link your user to their card

Link your user to their gift card with the PUT method of the User resource:

Submit an Update a User request with the the gift_card ID(s) of the card(s) you want to link to.

> **Important!**: Remember to also include _all_ of your user's existing details in this request. 
If you do not include those details, the system will clear them out.

The following example request links gift card gap-gc-005 to user 5:

curl -XPUT -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '  {
    "user_id": "user005",
    "amazon_id": "amz9876",
    "name": "Steve Stevens",
    "email": "steve.stevens@example.com",
    "gift_cards": ["gap-gc-005"]  
  }' 'http://localhost:3000/users/5'

Example response:

{
  "user_id": "user005",
  "amazon_id": "amz9876",
  "name": "Steve Stevens",
  "email": "steve.stevens@example.com",
  "gift_cards": [
    "gap-gc-005"
  ],
  "id": 5
}

Link the gift card to your user

Link the gift card to your user with the PUT method of the Gift Card resource:

Submit an Update Gift Card request with your user’s user_id.

The following example request links user user005 to gift card 8:

curl -XPUT -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '  {
    "card_id": "gap-gc-005",
    "user_id": "user005",
    "issuer": "Hanes",
    "balance": 200,
    "expiry_date": "2026-12-31"
  }' 'http://localhost:3000/gift_cards/8'

Example response:

{
  "card_id": "gap-gc-005",
  "user_id": "user005",
  "issuer": "Hanes",
  "balance": 200,
  "expiry_date": "2026-12-31",
  "id": 8
}

What next?

Now that your user has gift cards associated, they can start redeeming them in their Amazon.com shopping cart.

Links

This site is open source. Improve this page.