I have a problem connecting subscription payments in paypal with their respective orders.
In a nutshell, the initial payment for the subscription is made on an order.
Once the user pays, the order is approved and I get this information from the paypal API:
{"id":"2M9235603X788581X","intent":"CAPTURE","status":"APPROVED","payment_source":{"paypal":{"email_address":"email_address","account_id":"8XHXZUT5Y3CVS","name":{"given_name":"John","surname":"Doe"},"address":{"country_code":"US"}}},"purchase_units":[],"payer":{"name":{"given_name":"John","surname":"Doe"},"email_address":"email_address","payer_id":"8XHXZUT5Y3CVS","address":{"country_code":"US"}},"create_time":"2023-02-13T17:24:46Z","links":[{"href":"https:\/\/api.sandbox.paypal.com\/v2\/checkout\/orders\/2M9235603X788581X","rel":"self","method":"GET"},{"href":"https:\/\/api.sandbox.paypal.com\/v2\/checkout\/orders\/2M9235603X788581X","rel":"update","method":"PATCH"},{"href":"https:\/\/api.sandbox.paypal.com\/v2\/checkout\/orders\/2M9235603X788581X\/capture","rel":"capture","method":"POST"}]}
Right of the bat the data is incomplete, missing crucial information such as fees and transaction details. So next best thing is to get the data on the webhook.
When the payment goes through an event is triggered "PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED", which sends this info to my server:
{"id":"WH-6SE66006R98946535-7F814879YL577135N","event_version":"1.0","create_time":"2023-02-13T17:25:09.906Z","resource_type":"sale","event_type":"PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED","summary":"Payment completed for EUR 39.37 EUR","resource":{"billing_agreement_id":"I-0HN4N0KTWLMP","amount":{"total":"39.37","currency":"EUR","details":{"subtotal":"39.37"}},"payment_mode":"INSTANT_TRANSFER","update_time":"2023-02-13T17:25:03Z","create_time":"2023-02-13T17:25:03Z","protection_eligibility_type":"ITEM_NOT_RECEIVED_ELIGIBLE,UNAUTHORIZED_PAYMENT_ELIGIBLE","transaction_fee":{"currency":"EUR","value":"1.76"},"protection_eligibility":"ELIGIBLE","links":[{"method":"GET","rel":"self","href":"https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/payments/sale/036421861N8145017"},{"method":"POST","rel":"refund","href":"https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/payments/sale/036421861N8145017/refund"}],"id":"036421861N8145017","state":"completed","invoice_number":""},"links":[{"href":"https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/notifications/webhooks-events/WH-6SE66006R98946535-7F814879YL577135N","rel":"self","method":"GET"},{"href":"https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/notifications/webhooks-events/WH-6SE66006R98946535-7F814879YL577135N/resend","rel":"resend","method":"POST"}]}
From the billing agreement ID (which is the subscription ID) I can get the transactions, based on a time period:
{"transactions":[{"status":"COMPLETED","id":"036421861N8145017","amount_with_breakdown":{"gross_amount":{"currency_code":"EUR","value":"39.37"},"fee_amount":{"currency_code":"EUR","value":"1.76"},"net_amount":{"currency_code":"EUR","value":"37.61"}},"payer_name":{"given_name":"John","surname":"Doe"},"payer_email":"sb-wi93p1551674#personal.example.com","time":"2023-02-13T17:25:03.000Z"}],"links":[{"href":"https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/billing/subscriptions/I-0HN4N0KTWLMP/transactions?start_time=2023-02-01T07%3A50%3A20.940Z&end_time=2023-02-28T07%3A50%3A20.940Z","rel":"SELF","method":"GET"}]}
Now why it requires start and end date even though the filter is the agreement ID, I couldnt tell you, however here I can see the fees and since the event "PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED" has been triggered I can be sure that the payment has went through.
All thats left is for me to connect the transaction with the order.
But how?
There is no direct connection between the order and the transaction, no ID specified and nothing shown in the approved order.
How can I connect the transaction ID with the Order ID so I can have a proper confirmation and extract the fees?
I`ve tried direct capture, pulling the data from the API and setting up webhook for all payment and subscription events, yet nothing I've seen provides the required information.
SOLUTION:
So for any future developer that stumbels on this problem here is my advice and solution.
Make sure that you conform to the Paypal API and create reference records with their Subscription ID and transaction ID.
Now the tricky part is getting the transaction right away, so the user doesnt have to wait to long for a confirmation.
The way I`ve done this is after the subscription is created and the order approved, I send the relevant data to the server and using the Subscription ID I keep sending requests to get all transactions for it using this endpoint: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/subscriptions/v1/#subscriptions_transactions
I do this request with a while(){} cycle, for 5 max attempts with 2 seconds of sleep period between requests, since the transaction is not shown for the subscription right away.
After I get it I create the reference record and if the subscription transaction has the proper status, I save it as finished.
On the webhook, when receiving the "PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED" event, you need to check if the transaction reference is already created and if not, create it.
This will server you for any future payments (since its a subscription)
Hope this helps
In your example, the subscription ID is I-0HN4N0KTWLMP and the transaction ID of the first payment (sale/capture) is 036421861N8145017. (I don't know where the order ID 2M9235603X788581X is coming from; PayPal subscriptions do not use Order IDs, those are for one-time payments)
With the subscription ID you can get its details with a simple GET call: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/subscriptions/v1/#subscriptions_get , no date ranges are needed.
For details on the actual payment, such as fees, either of the payments API versions may work with that ID:
V2 capture get: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments/v2/#captures_get
Older V1 sale get: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments/v1/#sale_get
Listening for the webhook event PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED is the correct general solution for receiving a server-side notification of both the initial and future payments.
If you need your own "user" or similar ID for reconciliation, set custom_id when creating the subscription.
My problem is as follows:
I have a business paypal account where I have a list of transactions made by my clients (buying products on my webpage). I store their orders info via paypal IPN which only sends me the transaction ID of the order. So I store this transaction ID on my database among other basic data.
Now I need 2 things:
Retrieve the transaction data via php code.
Make refunds of any transaction also via php code.
I see Paypal API v2 is the recommended as the v1 is gonna be abandoned. I'm using Checkout-PHP-SDK:
https://github.com/paypal/Checkout-PHP-SDK
But I'm facing problems only trying to get any transaction data. I read that in order to get the data i cannot use the transaction ID but the order ID instead. But how can use an order ID that I ignore?, because from paypal IPN I only receive transaction ID and that's only what I have. So how can I get the order id from this transaction id?. I know I'm probably confusing terms so sorry in advance.
When you capture an order, the immediate API response already contains all information about the transaction -- including the transaction ID at purchase_units[0].payments.captures[0].id. There is no need to use the old IPN service. Your integration should not depend on IPN in any way, that is bad design.
For refunds, use that transaction (capture) id with the v2/payments API
I have been able to create an order, get it approved and capture payment using PayPal sandbox. I would now like to test linking to the receipt for that order.
So, given that the order id assigned by PayPal is 1VC7586169694032B, based on the docs I tried to point my browser to the following locations:
https://www.paypal.com/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
https://www.api.sandbox.paypal.com/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
https://www.api.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
https://sandbox.paypal.com/v2/receipt/?id=1VC7586169694032B
None of these worked.
So, are receipts for sandbox transactions stored? If so, what is the correct link? If not, how can I test the feature of linking to the order receipt without creating a real live transaction?
An order id is not a PayPal transaction id. And neither one is a receipt id, much less a PayPal Here invoice id which are the docs and links in your question.
When you capture an order id, the merchant account's transaction id will be in the response at purchase_units[0].payments.captures[0].id.
That id can be looked up in PayPal.com . Perhaps you could dynamically link to the resulting details page, I haven't tested it.
Note that the merchant account and the payer account each have their own different transaction id, but it's possible to search for the "other account's" transaction id in paypal.com and still reach the details page.
A listener on my website 'listens' for successful purchases made via Paypal. Data retrieved by the listener includes a post variable that I can set before initiating the purchase. This is possible with Paypal's IPN(Instant Payment Notification). I am trying to get the IPN to recognize the users account on my website upon purchase. Every account on my website has a unique user ID number.
I have tried passing the accounts unique ID through Paypal's "Custom" variable so the IPN can listen for that. Though I think this is a bad idea because then people can purchase things for another account if they passed their unique ID. Though this is a guaranteed purchase handler, hackers can take advantage of this with social engineering.
I see that some people instead pass the session_id with php, but this isn't safe because the listener would have no way of recognizing the user's website account if the session_id were to disappear. I also see that people will pass a cookie tied to the user's unique account. I don't think this is a good idea because the cookie could be cleared.
It is to my impression that I can not send a refund or cancel a purchase if the user's account could not be identified(Without doing it manually). What checkout flow should I do?
I would create a local invoice record in your system, and this invoice would get a customer ID associated with it.
Then you can use the INVOICE parameter to pass the invoice ID to PayPal, and that would come back in IPN where you can then lookup the customer ID based on that invoice ID.
TL;DR- How do I know if I really did get paid, via the PayPal NVP API?
Longer version
I'm writing code to automagically process and classify transactions from our PP business account. I have code that calls NVP methods TransactionSearch and GetTransactionDetails and fills a few database tables with the results that are returned. This happens every day for the previous 24 hours' worth of transactions. So far, so good.
I began from the assumption that the same information available via manual CSV export via the PayPal web interface would be available via the API, but I'm now discovering that either this is not the case, or there is another API call I should be making to get the rest of the information I need.
In particular, GetTransactionDetails doesn't seem to return the equivalent of CSV field "Reference Txn ID" and, in a few cases, I can't see how to connect related transactions.
So, my question is how can I obtain the reference transaction ID, or how do I otherwise connect these associated transactions?
Example 1
This is (probably) the most common sort of situation where the reference transaction ID is needed.
Depending on the buyer's funding source, you may either see a purchase complete instantly or, if the transaction must be cleared, complete across three separate transactions:
The original payment, detail of which gives buyer's name, email, address, invoice number, item ID, gross, fee and net amounts etc.
followed immediately by a debit of the net amount
followed, in a few days, by a credit of the net amount.
It is crucial to match the three transactions because you don't know whether the payment will succeed or be declined (and therefore whether you've actually got the money) unless you do.
In the data I have available to me at the moment, there is only one such example of this situation, and calls to GetTransactionDetails for the settlement transactions fail completely ("The transaction could not be loaded") — possibly because, in that one instance, I know that the payment was made with a credit card by somebody who doesn't have a PayPal account.
This might be an anomaly, or it might be the common case. I have seen this triplet of transactions quite frequently in other PayPal accounts, but not this one, so I can't be sure.
Example 2
A payment in a foreign currency will typically generate three transactions, rather like in Example 1:
The original payment (eg in €), the detail of which gives the sender's name and email address etc;
this is then followed by an immediate debit of the (probably net) amount in €
and then an immediate credit in USD.
From the point of view of the NVP API, GetTransactionDetails usually returns values labelled SETTLEAMT and SETTLEAMTCURRENCYCODE for the original payment. No further processing is required.
However, a recent such transaction (for reasons that even PayPal could not adequately explain) did not auto-convert, and the GetTransactionDetails call lacks the settlement values even after the conversion was performed manually.
The transactions are all there — but I cannot see any programmatic way to associate them because an attempt to call GetTransactionDetails on currency conversion transactions returns the error "You can not get the details for this type of transaction".
—
Any advice or experience relating to automatic processing of PayPal transactions? Is there any way to duplicate, programmatically, the same data included in the CSV export?
If necessary, I'd be happy to process the CSV export if there were some way to generate it programmatically, but I don't even know of a way to do that (short of a Selenium-driven solution full of pitfalls).
GetTransactionDetails will include a PARENTTRANSACTIONID if there is a related transaction. For example, a refund transaction would have a parent transaction ID.