Smarty only generating nulls from API calls

Question

Using the Explorer, I built up the smarty code I need for a template to pull in address information on a contact for use in an email:

{crmAPI var='result' entity='Address' action='get' contact_id=203}
{foreach from=$result.values item=address}
  {$address.some_field}
{/foreach}

and it produces the desired output in the Explorer when executed.

In an email though, the expected output never renders, and when I add the smarty expression {result|@debug_print_var}, I get null for the value of the variable in the message.

The fact that I'm getting null suggests to me that smarty is in fact running, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it can't seem to make an API call. Thoughts?

Thanks for the help!

N.B.: I'm running CiviCRM 5.17.4 on Drupal 7.67 and Ubuntu 16.04.

Update

With the following email code:

{capture assign=contact_id}{contact.contact_id}{/capture}

id: {contact.contact_id}

smarty id: {$contact_id}

{crmAPI var='result' entity='Contact' action='get' id=203}

{$result|@debug_print_var}

This is the email that renders when sending to contact # 203:

id: 203

smarty id: 203

null

Answer 1

So, for posterity's sake, I wanted to share the answer I figured out.

When I looked at the Source view of the email in CiviCRM, I realized that the code had pasted as

<p>id:&nbsp;{contact.contact_id}</p>

<p>smarty id: {$contact_id}</p>

<p>{crmAPI var=&#39;result&#39; entity=&#39;Contact&#39; action=&#39;get&#39; id=203}</p>

<p>{$result|@debug_print_var}</p>

instead of

{capture assign=contact_id}{contact.contact_id}{/capture}

id: {contact.contact_id}

smarty id: {$contact_id}

{crmAPI var='result' entity='Contact' action='get' id=203}

{$result|@debug_print_var}

When I composed the code correctly in the Source view rather than the HTML view, everything worked as expected!