I am writing a script to handle the paypal IPN, so when someone buys something via paypal it will send them an email and write some info into a database.
I am using the Instant Payment Notification simulator, and it is sending my email ok but i would like it to actually re-direct to my php page, so i can test my error checking etc. When you submit it does call the page but i would like to actually be re-directed to it.
Anyone know if this is possible, or if there is anything i can do to 'fake' this process
Cheers
Luke
Well, you can just test your IPN by using a temporary Payment Data Transfer page. Read this page for more information about this.
So basically after your payment has been done it redirects you to that success page and does everything. So you can use the success page as a test version of your future IPN page. After your script is working exactly the way you want, you can use the code on that page by simply copy-pasting it into your IPN page and deleting that test PDT page.
Another way is to catch the entire output of your IPN page and mail it to you. Or store it somewhere. To do this, make use of PHP's output buffering.
I hope that makes sense to you...
I usually use micahcarrick Paypal IPN class for Paypal IPN.In this class you can see
success case in switch case statement, There you can redirect to your success page.
Actually, Paypal IPN will return response to us. you can see the action parameter in return url. using this you can find is payment is success or cancel or any error during payment.
Hope it helps,Thanks
Paypal IPN messages are Server to Server Messages for asynchronously receiving messages from Paypal regarding transactions. The HTTP Client used by Paypal to deliver IPN message to your server may not support redirect requests. As these HTTP requests are not coming from users browsers' output from your Php script is irrelevant. If you want to do any extended processing you have to incorporate that into your IPN Handler.
Related
I've just uploaded the PayPal APIs to test my scripts, and so far, they seem to be working properly (all in sandbox mode). Payments are processed, and the transaction details are returned, but for some reason, the transactions are not being recorded on the PayPal dashboard.
I tried the IPN simulator, using the sample script from GitHub, but keep getting this error:
IPN was not sent, and the handshake was not verified.
The script works; at the very least, it writes a log file when called from any browser. But not when called from PayPal's IPN simulator.
Could really use some pointers in the right direction. TIA.
If you are HERE, then yes you "should" see them, however that dashboard is not very reliable. This is why I asked for clarity on 'what' dashboard you're looking at and posted the URL of sandbox.paypal.com.
If you're able to ping your IPN listener but PayPal is uanble to, try defining and enabling the IPN URL in the sandbox account and see what happens. From there you'll notice an IPN history link where you can see the status of the IPN call from that transction. If it failed, it will give you the error and you can troubleshoot from there.
Hope this helps
I am currently using the following library:
https://github.com/paypal/adaptiveaccounts-sdk-php/tree/master/samples/IPN
And Paypal IPN seems to be working fine... I can successfully checkout and all of the POST data from Paypal is logged to my server, only problem is - How do I check against it when the user is back on the site?
I currently have the return URL set to the same as the IPN url (look in github for code) and after I get all of the valid data, the user gets returned to the IPN page and it says invalid.
Not quite sure, any thoughts?
IPN should NOT be used as the return URL.
Return URL brings the buyer back to your site. The page at the return URL should display either a generic thank you page, or a page indicating the status of the buyer's order. Which one of the above to choose, depends on the PayPal product you select, your integration and your purchasing flow.
The script URL of the IPN listener is used to automate your order handling process. The IPN listener gets the IPN messages, processes your order in your own defined way.
IPN listener should post back very specific data to PayPal IPN endpoint with HTTP Status 200. If it also outputs a page, it makes things too complicated. You would need to differentiate between a buyer visit and a PayPal IPN message, and need to do corresponding display or IPN verification. To make things simple, separating the two things into two pages / scripts would be better and more logical.
I think this is the reason why your buyer gets "invalid": your IPN listener gets the request data when a buyer returns to your listener, and uses the data to verify IPN with PayPal. PayPal returns "invalid" as the data are not from valid IPN messages and thus cannot be verified.
Not a Php dev and haven't looked, but if you really want to use the same URL (I wouldn't - they serve different purposes), then the difference would be the (http) request method:
GET for a redirect and
POST for IPN
That would be one way you'd determine what kind of Request that url is getting and handle as you deem fit.
so I got a guy to code this IPN feature for my website.
Basically a user pays thought the main site then it forwards the ipn stuff to another server and that server sends ipn payment to paypal. For some reason it keeps saying "retrying" under the paypal IPN history. Is paypal blocking this and does the payment have to be made from the same server? Thanks hopefully this makes sense!
IPN does not happen until after any transaction has occurred, so what you're saying here doesn't really make sense. There's no way IPN would be sending any payment to PayPal. PayPal simply POSTs transaction data to your IPN URL after the transaction has taken place.
That said, if you're seeing "retrying" in your IPN History that means your IPN script is not completing successfully, and as such, is not returning a 200 result code back to PayPal's server. You need to troubleshoot your IPN script to figure out what's failing and get it fixed.
Your web server logs should provide the information you need. If you look there you should see a log of when your IPN URL was hit and it should also provide the result including any errors that were generated from the request to that script.
I like to create a simple HTML form with the action set to my IPN URL and then include hidden fields that match the fields/values that I would expect to get from IPN. This way you can load that in a browser and submit it directly so that you can see the result on screen which can help with troubleshooting and debugging.
Keep in mind that when testing that way, though, the data is not coming from PayPal's servers, so it will not verify. You'll need to make sure your script is setup to handle this accordingly for testing purposes.
I've a problem with Paypal IPN. The callback works very well.
I've a site and anyone can signup for free in my site. Later, the user can upgrade the account and here intervenes paypal.
How can I be sure that the user (A) paid to the transaction_id (0123) ?
Ex.
User (A) -> Click to button (item_number = (0009)) -> redirect to paypal page;
User (?) paid -> Paypal IPN sended and server received data -> [Which user has paid?]
!! This, without the user return to the site !!
Thank You
I'm sorry #Vincenzo Raco, but that is bad advice.
PDT and IPN are essentially the same exact thing except that PDT sends data to your return URL and IPN sends it to a silent listener.
There is no guarantee that users will make it back to your return URL, even if you have Auto Return enabled, so it's never a good idea to handle post-payment processing tasks on the return URL. If your IPN is getting hacked that means you have a problem with your configuration.
All IPN's are verified with PayPal's servers, and if you're using API calls, hosted buttons, encrypted buttons, etc. people can't see the original code, copy it, and make adjustments to pricing, which would be the only potential "hack" that anybody could do. Just make sure not to use basic, standard HTML buttons and that potential problem goes away.
IPN is definitely what you want to use to handle your post-payment processing. You can save your user record or whatever data you're working with in your database prior to sending the user over to PayPal. You can include the record ID of your database in the PayPal payment request (I typically use the invoice parameter for this) and then that will be returned in IPN so that you can pull that data back out of your database or add new related accordingly.
I created a hosted button using a business account and integrated that code with my php application.
I use 'Website Payments Standard' and generated the 'Buy Now Button' using the tool provided in 'Merchant Services' page.
I am using http://sandbox.paypal.com/ to test this.
Configurations in Merchant Profile:
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is
'Enabled' and 'Notification URL'
given.
Auto Return is On.
Return URL specified (the same given above in notification URL)
Payment Data Transfer is On
Website Payment is Off
PayPal Account Optional: is Off
While creating the button also in the third option I gave the same notify_url.
Transaction happens successfully and gets redirected to my notify_url.
The issue is, $_POST from paypal response in my notified page is empty.
I printed the $_POST in the first line of my notifier page itself. Do I need to add any other configuration? Am I making any mistake?
The data is going to the IPN url. Log the $_POST data to a file from the script at the IPN URL and see what you are getting. I think if you turn off the IPN, you may then get the data on the notify_url (been a while though, not 100% sure on that part).
the notify url is just for receiving the data from paypal about the transaction, it's not a webpage that you can display, because it doesn't happen inside the normal page flow, paypal simple opens a curl command (or similar) to your server and dumps all the data over $_POST
the return url is only used when the user clicks to return to your website.
so don't use the return url for recording the status of the payment, or sending emails, it'll fail badly, always use the notify url for doing that, the return url is just to show the user something pretty after he's paid, or not pretty if it failed