Current Status
I'm quite new to PayPal and I'm currently integrating chained adaptive payments on our website. Already successfully called the PAY API call via the .NET SDK. Money (sandbox enviroment) will be correctly transferred to each participants of this payment (sender, primary and secondary receiver).
Requirement
My goal is to execute vital tasks after the payment is successful (update DB, send mail, ...) or has been cancelled (clean up stuff, ...).
Possible solutions
1)
First approach was to create the payment with actionType set to CREATE, redirect the user to paypal.com (wait for approval), redirect user back to website and execute the payment and then perform the vital tasks. But it seems not to work, the payment will be paid and is COMPLETED before the second redirect.
2)
Another possible solution would be to get the preapproval from the user, redirect back to the website and execute the payment. Haven't tried this solution yet, don't think that this is best practice.
3)
Call PAY with actionType set to "PAY" and wait for IPN. Haven't tried that either, because it is quite difficult to test it locally (even though I've already found this question: Paypal Sandbox Test Tool IPN Simulator in Localhost).
Question(s)
Which solution is best practice? I guess the recommended solution would be to wait for an IPN?
If I'am using IPN how long is the average response time after a payment has been completed? Seconds, minutes, hours? I know it depends on the load of the PayPal webservers and that there are 15 retries over 4 days, but what are some real world numbers?
Can I store additional information (e.g. UserId) about the sender in a payment (besides the memo field) which I then get back in an IPN?
Here is how I do it.
When I'm going to initiate PayPal payment (before I send a request to obtain TOKEN), I create new transaction in my database and set it's status to PENDING. In transaction table I also have userID column, which is foreign key to user table. This way I connect transaction with user.
When transaction is created in my table, I use transactionId value, and save it to PHP $_SESSION variable.
Please note that if you want to support recurring payments, you can provide transactionId to PayPal. This you can do by setting:
"PAYMENTREQUEST_0_INVNUM"=>$transaction->id.
This value will be sent when PayPal sends you IPN request after recurring payment happens.
Go back now to the story
User is redirected to PayPal, and when user fills PayPal username and password, and when user confirms payment details, user will be redirected back to your website and you have to call DoExpressCheckoutPayment to make payment itself.
If the result of DoExpressCheckoutPayment API call is success, that means that transaction was successful and you have money. At this point, you can send email, notifications, or any other important action.
$transactionResponse=$paypal->request("DoExpressCheckoutPayment",$requestParams);//Execute transaction
if(is_array($transactionResponse) && $transactionResponse["ACK"]=="Success")//Payment was successfull
{
//Send email
//Notify user
//Do other important changes in database, for example mark this transaction as successful
Transactions()::model()->updateByPk($_SESSION['transactionId'],array('status'=>'SUCCESS');
}
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR RECURRING PAYMENTS: PayPal can/will send you several IPN requests for the same recurring transaction which means that you have to add logic which will chekc weather specific IPN request is already processed or not. Usually I do it in a way to check weather status of my transaction with transactionId is 'PENDING' or 'SUCCESSFUL'.
Related
I am building a payment system where a user can make a payment against an orderId
I want to make sure that only one payment gets through (gets captured)
The payment flow is like this:
1- User clicks on Paypal button
2- a Transaction PENDING_PAYMENT gets created for the user with orderId
3- User pays in Paypal
4- Paypal sends webhook and marks the payment as AUTHORIZED
5- The system CAPTURES the payment
as you see, the user can open multiple Paypal pages and pay all of them at the same time, there's no way for me to prevent this, but I want to be able to CAPTURE only one of these payments. (so I can automatically refund the rest of the payments)
I really appreciate any help, Thank you in advance.
When you set up the PayPal transaction for approval, pass a unique invoice_id to PayPal that has never before been used for a successful payment on that PayPal account. This could be your orderId, perhaps with some additional prefix added if desired. (For instance if you had multiple storefronts on the same PayPal account that might use the same order numbers, a prefix of 3 letters and a dash indicating the store name is a typical choice)
By default, PayPal accounts prevent (block) any subsequent payments for an invoice_id that was previously used for a successful payment on that account -- precisely to prevent accidental payments for the same thing, as is your use case.
I'am having troubles about how to handle the paypal recurrent payment system.
I followed every instruction in the website, but once i create the profile, paypal puts it in pending, making me doubt about the reliability of the service itself.
I tried to look over the internet but i didn't really get how this should work...
i made the first call with SetExpressCheckout in order to create the request, when the token is returned, i send the token to the paypal page, the user confirms the payment, then i call the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile method to confirm the operation (passing PAYERID and TOKEN and setting the AMT value for the first payment and the PROFILESTARTDATE as now +1 month for the future payments)
Now when i try to read the response from the last call (or if i go to the buyer/seller paypal account) i see that the payment is in pending and i have to wait an undefined amount of time before this payment is activated.
Now the real question is: can i trust the fact that even if the payment is in pending, i'll receive the payment and so i can set set the user as member or i have to check and wait until the status is 'active' with the GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails method?
PS: i'm doing this in the sandbox version, maybe the official version is a bit faster and more reliable?
Thank you!
In Sandbox as in Live when you call CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile you will also get the response in which it will give you the status of the profile (ActiveProfile or PendingProfile). When the status is in Penidng it means that the system is in process of creating the recurring payment profile. You can then check your IPN messages for an update. It is normal but obviously if you notice that all the profiles you create get into Pending and never activate then there could be a bug but should not be the case. In here is the PayPal technical guide for this API: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile_API_Operation_NVP/
Using the parallel payments paypal api. If user 1 makes a payment to user 2, I make a check using the api to make sure paypal returns the payment details as COMPLETED.
How long does paypal keep that COMPLETED payment record? Do they keep it indefinitely, or do they delete it after a while? I ask because I am at the stage of development where I need to decide if I should rely on paypal keeping that record indefinitely, or if I should create a record on my server that the payment has been completed, or if I should always check if the payment has been marked as COMPLETED by querying paypal?
The only reason why I "want" to check via paypal, is if the payment is ever returned to user1 as REFUNDED or PARITALLY_REFUNDED when paypal is queried using their apis. I would want to act accordingly in such situations.
It's not too much of an issue if the status is REFUNDED or PARTIALLY_REFUNDED as apparently people can't get refunds if they don't open a case with paypal before 45 days are up. I am more concerned about the REVERSED status, which can apparently happen any time, even after 45 days which is beyond paypal's control, as it is done by the credit card companies, if the user pays by credit card...
Using the PaymentDetails request I was able to pull my oldest Adaptive Payment transaction, which was over 60 days old and had no problems pulling it up using the transactionId field. It should be able to pull up payments as long as they are listed in the PayPal account (currently forever.)
This will work using the payKey field also if you are storing that instead of transactionId, however the transactionId is displayed in your PayPal account and is sent with IPN responses.
i has been implemented paypal recurring subscription plan in php and paypal recurring also charge via paypal as per recurring periods. but my system didnt find out next recurring was charged or not so how could i know next recurring payment has been charged using paypal api.
i want to help for to upgrade next expire date after next recurring payment changed.
As I understood, you want to see if the user paid or not and change expiration date according to that.
The solution is Webhooks. In your PayPal Application section click on add webhook and choose PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED and enter the URL that you want to listen to this event where PayPal will send a post request to this URL when you get a new payment completed.
In the page that corresponds to the URL you entered, you have to do the followings:
Verify that the call is from PayPal, not from another source (in case you are using PHP you can check this: PHP verify Paypal webhook signature)
Parse the data sent from PayPal by reading the body content, not the POST data
Verify that the event is what you need, in this case PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED
Verify the amount you received and the currency
Make sure that you have not processed this transaction before and this is too important
If everything is valid, you can save the transaction and do whatever you want, in your case extending the expiry date.
If I understand you correctly, you need to configure Instant Payment Notification (IPN). PayPal's server will POST transaction data to a listener script you have on your server so you can process things accordingly. It happens in real-time.
When working with recurring payments you'll get an IPN when a profile is created, canceled, or suspended, and you'll also get notifications when payments for profiles are completed, failed, etc. You can update your system or send out email notifications accordingly based on the IPN data you get.
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.