Integrating PayPal's PHP REST API SDK, still a good idea? - paypal

I'm currently integrating the PayPal's PHP REST API SDK. However, reading the documentation and the code I've found that the method to get the payer's shipping details is deprecated. Also, PayPal is encouraging to use Braintree's SDK to process credit card payments. Also, the git repository seems to be very quiet.
Thus, here are my two questions :
Is PayPal abandoning the REST API ? Is it still a good idea to use its deprecated methods to return the payer's shipping details ? Or is there another way I haven't discovered yet ?
Is PayPal still a good option for guest credit card payments ? Or do I risk having my e-commerce down suddenly one day ?
I am aware of other solutions that have PayPal support such as Braintree. However, my busisness isn't large enough for them to accept my application so I am stuck with PayPal (coming from Shopify and going independant)
Thanks a lot for your time !
LazyTanuki

Related

get started with Paypal Pro API

I am working for a company that is using Paypal pro. There are so many Paypal account types, API's, and SDK's that I am starting to get confused with it all. At developer.paypal.com, there is documentation for many different things. What API and/or documentation do I use to start integrating paypal into my website? What is the difference between all these different ones?
Any advice or help would be great, as I am stuck.
Thanks for your time!
Personally, I would avoid the REST API and stick with the Classic API for now. The REST API is very new and doesn't do (much) more than the Classic APIs do. In fact, the Classic API is much more mature has a lot more functionality, which is one of the reasons I still prefer and recommend it.
With PayPal Pro you will use one of two APIs depending on which version you have.
Website Payments Pro 3.0 - This uses the DoDirectPayment API
Payments Pro 2.0 - This uses the PayFlow API.
Payments Pro 2.0 is actually the newer version. If you're interested in more detail on that you can take a look at my article on the History of PayPal Payments Pro.
So those would be for direct credit card processing through your site / application from your own custom checkout page. To add PayPal payments to that, you would use Express Checkout APIs. Specifically,
SetExpressCheckout
GetExpressCheckoutDetails
DoExpressCheckoutPayment
If you are working with PHP this PayPal PHP SDK will make all of these calls very simple for you.

Check if PayPal API/Service is available/up

I am integrating PayPal into a Java payment service and was wondering if there is easy way to tell if PayPal API is up and running. I checked the documentation and found the error code 10101 - This API Temporarily Unavailable but couldn't find a method that should be used to poll the service. The idea is if the API is down I won't show PayPal as available payment option. The actual integration is Express checkout.
It's very, very rare that Paypal live APIs go down (in 2009 PayPal was doing $3,000 per second in transactions so a downtime costs them LOTS of money). I don't know that I would make an API call just to see if it's down. Just handle the errors when they happen.

Paypal Integration with website

I am working on a event-based website that requires PayPal payment. I checked the documentation as well as the questions and answers on Stackoverflow. However, I am still don't know what is the best way to accomplish this. The following are the steps that I have to do:
An audience registers for an event. He provides all the personal information and choose the sessions that he will attend.
The system saves his information into a database and redirects him to the PayPal website so that he can pay by using credit card or PayPal account.
After the payment is verified by Paypal, call back to the website so that I can save the payment status in the database and process further steps.
If you have done something similar, please share it with me. Thank you in advance
PS: I am using PHP Laravel Framework.
You can use Omnipay to do via Paypal: https://github.com/adrianmacneil/omnipay
Your steps 2 and 3 are covered, for PayPal and many other payment gatways.
But if you are on US or UK, you should think about using Stripe as payment gateway. It's what Laracasts (by Jeffrey Way) and Userscape (Taylor's company) is using. It's very easy.
Stripe documentation is awsome and there are some stuff written about this, screencasts, like this one: http://www.screenr.com/d3v8 (for Laravel 3, but you'll get the idea) and Composer packages, like those:
http://packalyst.com/packages/package/mosey/stripe
https://github.com/Abodeo/laravel-stripe
Good luck!

Integrating paypal recurring

I am new to PayPal integrating and need to integrate PayPal recurring for subscriptions. I googled for that, but I am confused with below questions.
Which API should I use with PayPal recurring, WPS or Paypal express checkout? Which one will be good?
Is there any good example or help to integrate this?
Thanks a ton in advance.
Good overview of recurring payments: Handling recurring payments
I'm using the Lionite PHP Paypal class. It's not free, but even if you're not going to use it, read through that page because it contains some useful info that is omitted from the Paypal docs.
If I understand correctly, Express Checkout requires your customer to set up a Paypal account, so Website Payments Standard would be a better option.
Unfortunately the Paypal SDK only has code examples for direct payment. If you want to use Website Payments Pro with Direct Payment, be aware of PCI compliance (which can be expensive and time-consuming) and also be aware that services like BrainTree exist which have transparent redirect, thus helping you to avoid PCI compliance (I haven't used this service however).
Express checkout code example: https://github.com/hrendoh/PayPal-Recurring-Payment-example
Set up your sandbox account at http://developer.paypal.com
Update: IPN for recurring payments is a nightmare. Not only are the recurring payment IPN responses completely undocumented, but none of the support staff I talked to had a clue about them either (in some cases they gave me incorrect answers to questions). Here is a list that others have put together, but all of these resources are incomplete:
https://www.x.com/developers/community/blogs/ppmacole/recurring-payments-ipns?page=1
http://docs.ipn-easy.com/html/T_Rolosoft_IpnEasy_Net_PayPal_TxnType.htm
Unfortunately because of the limits placed on recurring payments with express checkout, direct payment was the only option for me. I strongly suggest that if you need to do direct payment with recurring payments that you find a different payment provider.

A comprehensive list of PayPals APIs and their intended usage?

At my current company I have inherited an undocumented PayPal integration. As far as I can tell it uses a part of PayPal called the "PayPal checkout". This is similar but different than the PayPal IPN API.
After scouring the PayPal documentation I am still finding obscure pages talking about new APIs. Does anybody know of a clear, concise, sane list of PayPal's APIs and their intended usage?
check http://www.programmableweb.com/api/paypal