First of all sorry about my english,
I have a small problem with the IPN PayPal notification system. After a payment is done on my website, Paypal send to me a IPN message in order to confirm the transaction. In my website I need to do some stuff, including setting a variable which indicates the order can be send. But in the case two payments with the same amount are done at the same moment, how can I distinguish them? The user's mail is not enough because the mail I have can be diferent of the paypal user's mail...
Any Idea?
Ok, I think using the custom filed I can achieve that.
The transaction is identified by the txn_id field. In the case of a Reversal or Cancel_reversal, the original transaction it refers to is given by the parent_txn_id field.
I don't see what 'with the same amount' has to do with it.
Related
I've recently wrote my IPN listener script to manage purchases for my website. Whenever a user submits a payment, there is a custom hidden field with their USER ID as the value. I know that to identify if the message is a REFUND, it'll have the post parameters:
reason_code = refund
Now my question is, when PayPal notifies my IPN listener of the refunded item, will it still send the exact same post data (including my custom field so I can manage the user accordingly due to thei) that was sent when they purchased the item?
I hope I made my message clear and that it's not too confusing.
Thank you.
Yes, when you issue a refund you will receive the same custom variable back in the refund that you passed over when you charged the buyer. It will have the same value that you set. I also just tested this to make sure there were no issues with this feature, and it is working as it should.
Is there a way to update the variable data that was sent to paypal?
Given this scenario, a customer purchases an item with code A, then code B is introduced that now logs users id and other information. But all customers who purchased using code A will not be correctly identified by code B.
I can see the IPN message detail in the IPN history, but I just wished I could type into that box and manually update/correct a few of the variables.
Is there a way to do this, or a way around this?
You can update the customer's recurring payment profile using another API. I don't know what the point of amending, at PayPal, an IPN message that has already been sent to you is, but you can't do it, and you don't want to do it. You would be lying to yoursef about what they have sent you, and perpetrating a fraud against PayPal as well. All you have to do is adjust what happened at your end.
I am using paypal to verify users on my website by having them a .01$ payment and getting their IPN information.
To prevent double subscriptions therefore, I need a piece of information that is sent over the notification that is absolutely unique.
I have noticed that one can change their email over paypal so, email is not viable. Are there things in the IPN that are unique and do not change over time, like by making other payments or changing email address?
Thanks in advance.
PayPal provides a PayerID that is a unique identifier for PayPal accounts. It never changes regardless of what users do with their email address or anything else. It gets returned in IPN as payer_id.
PayPal states:
Note: If you have turned on Auto
Return and have chosen to turn on
PayPal Account Optional for new users,
a new user will not be automatically
directed back to your website, but
will be given the option to return.
But if some of the customers don't get "Auto Returned", how do I handle them programmatically?
Paypal does not guarantee autoreturn especially when Paypal Account - optional setting is on.
The right way to handle the integration is with Instant Payment Notification (IPN) option. Using IPN Paypal will make POSTS to your page notifying you of payment events. The following link explains the IPN process pretty well.
To summarize, you will write code that will trap posts from Paypal and then make sure to update your billing data accordingly.
Also, IPN messages might be slightly delayed.
Create a script (cron or what) that does check for such payments at paypal perodically (e.g. every hour).
Is this what you mean?
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/mer/express_return_summary-outside
If not, you may need to be a little more specific with your question. Like - are you using paypal pro? How are your customers checking out? etc. And now that I read the answer below mine, I wonder if you are even talking about the payment process and not something else.
I wanted to use Paypal's IPN service to verify payments for a recurring subscription charge for my website. How do you tie the IPN confirmations to a user in your site?
The IPN confirmation message has a name, email, paypal ID, recurring payment ID, but it seems to not give a unique identifier since I don't know where the paypal ID or recurring payment id comes from and it may not be trivial to uniquely match up the name/email that a user has on their paypal account (or entered there) with the name/email I have for them on my site (there may be many John Smith's and the person may choose to use a different email.)
1) When I send the initial payment request to Paypal, I can attach a unique UUID in the URL I ask them to send back to me, so if I save that unique ID for that user I can match that payment confirmation to the user who initiated it. Am I making that harder than it is? Is there an easier way?
2) Also, for a recurring/subscription charge, does paypal always use the URL I specified with the initial payment initiation? Does anyone have practical experience using the recurring Paypal payments with IPN's, does it reuse that unique URL? Or do I have to associate the Paypal ID's with the user after the first recurring payment is received?
Attaching unique data to the payment request is pretty much the accepted way to do it.
I don't have any experience with recurring charges.
I recently also set up some reoccurring payments with Paypal.
I actually wanted people to register as members after paying for the subscription, if they wanted to. As having to sign up as a member could add some friction to the sale process. So I don't send any user info along with the Subscribe button.
What my IPN script does is generate a unique activation code tied to the Paypal subscriptionID in the Activations table, then it sends this code to whoever paid for the subscription, with instructions on how to activate.
At the point of activation, you need to register or login. At this point the userID is added to the relevant row in the Activations table.
When the EndOfTerm IPN notification comes in the IPN script looks up the userID from the Activations table based on the SubscriberID given in the IPN. Then I can do whatever I need to do to that user to disable their subscription.
At all time the URL of the IPN script remains the same.
1) You can send an 'item_number' parameter with the initial subscription setup, which will get passed back to you. I'd suggest embedding an identification token in it.
2) If you mean the 'return' parameter, no, that's for sending the user to at the conclusion of the subscription setup. The renewal is automatic and doesn't 'ping' that page.
1) You want to be using the item_number parameter. Set this in your HTML form shown to the customer, and it will be returned to you by the paypal IPN, so you can put a database row ID in here, and use it to match up to the right person later.