I've implemented a paypal transaction before but this one has a twist that I'm not quite sure what's the best way to handle it.
The basic idea is I want to create an account for the user when he provides some details and makes a payment via PayPal. Until BOTH the user details are filled out correctly AND the payment is made correctly, I shouldn't create an account for the user.
The setup I've done before was simply a paypal button that the user clicks, makes a payment, and gets forwarded back to just a generic page "your order will be processed and shipped" so there was no pre-order form involved.
This one is different though because
before PayPal, I need to collect initial user data
after PayPal, I need to create the new user account and use in it the user data collected from the pre-paypal form
I'm sure there's a logical way to implement this, but I'm not quite sure what's the flow I should follow to do it.
I use the Zend framework by the way, which shouldn't matter but just in case Zend has an easier way to help me with what I'm trying to do.
I do the following (though I do this in ASP.NET):
User fills out form
Info is saved in Order table in db with a unique invoice number
Invoice number is passed to PayPal, along with the IPN Notify URL, when you do the redirect
User is sent to Paypal to pay and then comes back to a generic Success page
Behind the scenes, Paypal makes a call to the IPN Notify url once processing is complete. This page receives your invoice number which PP returns with its call, and then does the account creation processing for that order after retrieving the details from the db. [This is a page with no UI, since only PP is hitting it.]
An email is sent from that process which notifies the customer that their account has been created and gives them the details.
This is a simplified version of the process, but hits the highlights. You can check out PayPal's page about IPN, and do a search on google for IPN integration with PHP.
Related
I have website where I use PayPal NVP sandbox. Sometimes after successful payment of user, PayPal get back to my return URL very slow. Unless PayPal returns to my website with details I am unable to check whether user has completed the order (For all attempt website adds order id to the database) or not and that destroys website's work principle.
What I need is that I want to retrieve the data of transaction without transaction id if possible. Maybe with custom field or something else. If I would be able to check the transaction details without transaction id , then I would be able to handle the requests by user accordingly. Or if there is a way to get a transaction id somehow with the help of another variable that also fine as I will make checking after finding out the transaction id.
Current PayPal Checkout integrations give an immediate response of success/failure. There is no need for any redirect away from your site, and there is no need to wait for asynchronous IPN or webhook messages. Don't use such things.
Follow the PayPal Checkout integration guide and make 2 routes on your server, one for 'Create Order' and one for 'Capture Order' (see the optional step 5 in 'Add and modify the code'; you can use the Checkout-PHP-SDK). Both of these routes on your server should return/output only JSON data (no HTML or text). Inside the 2nd route, when the capture API is successful you should store its resulting payment details in your database (particularly purchase_units[0].payments.captures[0].id, which is the PayPal transaction ID) and perform any necessary business logic (such as sending confirmation emails or reserving product) immediately before forwarding your return JSON to the frontend caller.
Pair those 2 routes with the frontend approval flow: https://developer.paypal.com/demo/checkout/#/pattern/server
Okay so I've setup a website with a basic paid subscription using Paypal. Here's the general flow of things:
1) A person fills up a basic subscription form and click subscribe
2) They get forwarded to Paypal who handles the payment
3) User clicks on "back to website" button
4) Account gets activated and user is forwarded to splash page
The thing is that if the user decides to close the window instead of clicking "Back to website", then his account will remain locked even though he paid (and yes, I'm aware you can skip the "back to website" button, but my client wants to keep it).
So, what I'd like to do is basically implement a form that will query Paypal's REST api to check if the user's receipt number actually exists and if so, complete his subscription. The problem is that most of the users pay through credit card, not Paypal... so all they have is a receipt number.
I've searched through the documentation and I can't seem to find how to query Paypal's REST API using the receipt number. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I use the IPN service provided by PayPal. With this, I pass a custom field along with the transaction containing the user's account number (you could use receipt number as long as you have it stored). I have an IPN Handler script that receives the verification from PayPal that the transaction completed successfully. This script receives the custom field, which can then be used to locate the user's account and update their subscription status.
On my website, I want to set up a "pay to remove ads" feature, and I want to collect payments for it through PayPal. The setup that I want for this is quite simple:
User pays
Payment is verified
The entry in the MySQL database containing the user's information is updated to disable ads on the site for that user
To do this, I want to use PayPal's IPN service. I understand the basics of it, but I am not quite sure how to implement it, nor do I understand how I can trigger the script to update the database for the correct user. I would imagine that to do this, I need to include some means of user identification whenever they begin the payment process, but I am not sure how to do that either. I am trying to implement this in PHP.
The process would be:
The user has an ID
When he pays, you attach this ID as the custom parameter in the PayPal request
You also define what url you want to call for the IPN
Once the payment is complete, PayPal sends the IPN
You verify that the actual status of the payment is "Completed"
You retrieve the user'ID from the custom parameter
You update your table
I hope it's clear :)
I have already done a small e-commerce with Paypal and it works, but I feel like it is done wrongly.
Because the page that handles the IPN response from Paypal can't read $_SESSION variables, before the user submits the form and is redirected to Paypal, I get all the cart items and store them in a table in the database and also I register a new order with the user information but with the status 0 ( not completed ).
Then, after the user pays and I get the IPN response, I check if the status is completed, check if the amount paid is correct, currency and the usual checks to make sure the payment is successful.
The problem with this approach is that if the user once redirected to Paypal, decide to leave/close the browser/Paypal tab, I will have a failed order registered in the database and I can't delete it but manually.
How can I handle this kind of situation, and is it correct to register the order/cart before the user pays ?
Thank you and sorry for the long post.
If you want to check if the transaction occurs rely on the IPN messages. Depending on which api you are using you have several way to customize the IPN message with useful information for you, ie:
using paypal custom field
define dynamically the IPN url with extra parameter ie www.yoursite.com/ipn?myvar=myval
That way you can have a hook between the payment and the actual user in your application.
Obiusly the php session attributes of the user is not available when the http post comes from paypal.
I have site with a members area that I've set up and want to make it so when people register, they need to subscribe to paypal, and only then the user is created in the database.
I don't know much how paypal works. Does anyone have any pointers? How or where do I start?
Basically I need to somehow redirect the visitor to paypal after he presses the "Register" button, make the payment, and then make Paypal return to my site and tell it that the payment was processed, so the user can be created...
Paypal IPN is the Paypal deployment for this kind of requirement.
IPN (Instant Payment Notification) allows you to delegate an endpoint URL that the payment gateway will send postdata to when a payment is completed successfully.
Most of the time this requires utilizing some kind of database to save the registration state while the user is forwarded over to Paypal for the payment process, making use of their SSL encryption and payment logic. When the process is completed, your application is notified with post data containing a unique identitfier generated by your app and passed with the original redirect in order to identify the user's session that has completed payment.
You will want to generate a unique id either using PHP uniqueid() function or by hashing a timestamp. This will be passed along to paypal in your redirect, and paypal will send it along with success/fail flags when the payment is processed. When the user fills out their form and is redirected to Paypal, save a boolean value for IsPaid in your database associated with their ID (i'd recommend using both a primary key as well as this unique transaction id mentioned earlier.) Your IPN script can then listen for the post data, parse it out and change the false IsPaid boolean for that id to true.
There are numerous good tutorials available. I've only used this in MVC deployments, so if you're doing procedural, googling around will help a great deal. Paypal's documentation has the most up to date parameter guides but there are other great, if a bit old, tutorials available independent of them.
http://www.web-development-blog.com/archives/easy-payments-using-paypal-ipn/
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/using-paypals-instant-payment-notification-with-php/
Look at the Paypal IPN API, this is used in most paid membership scripts:
https://cms.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/library_code