I have the paypal express checkout api running in the sandbox and i'm able to successfully do a transaction and capture the payment. Now I want to store some values in the database. I can get the transactionID, ordertime, payment status from the resArray no problem. But when I try to add additional variables that are listed on the "DoExpressCheckoutPaymentAPI Operation page of the https://cms.paypal.com website, they don't return any value
I correctly send via doExpresscheckout values for the following
PAYMENTREQUEST_0_SOFTDESCRIPTOR = 'My Company Name'
PAYMENTREQUEST_0_ALLOWEDPAYMENTMETHOD = 'Instant Payment Only'
I need to get the value of those as well as
PAYMENTINFO_0_SETTLEAMT
But when i read the resArray returned by DoExpressCheckout, these fields are non-existent.
Is there some way to get these values?
- is settleamt only returned if there is a currency conversion and if not it's not in the returned array?
Also, is there another way to only accept Instant Payments? I can live without the other stuff but I need to set Instant Payments only.
The response is not going to contain everything you pass into the request. Anything you're passing into the request you already have, so if you need to store that data you'll just need to do that using the same values you're passing into the request, be it session data or whatever.
You can refer to page 105 of the PayPal NVP Documentation for details on exactly what you should expect back in the DoExpressCheckout response.
Related
Our customers sends their requests for our products via email. Their requests are saved in our database and after we check their requests, we want to send them an email which contains the paypal payment link. To execute this, I am using BMCreateButton method of ButtonManager API of Paypal.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/button-manager/BMCreateButton_API_Operation_NVP/
This method returns EMAILLINK parameter and I am using this parameter in the email to redirect to user to paypal payment page. This method also returns HOSTEDBUTTONID and I am saving this parameter and EMAILLINK parameter to the database to make a relation between the email link(hostedbuttonid) and the user request.
For the payment notifications, I think my only choice is IPN of Paypal. I developed a page to handle the IPN messages from paypal and it works fine but the problem arises when I want to relate between the payment information with the email link that was sent to the customer. I mean I want to know for which request this payment was made. IPN message does not return any information about the HOSTEDBUTTONID. It returns btn_id(different than the HOSTEDBUTTONID), txn_id and ipn_track_id but none of them is useful to relate the customer request( or email sent) with the payment.
Do you have any suggestion about my issue? Or do you think I should use another way for sending the payment email to the user instead of BMCreateButton method of ButtonManager API.
In the BMCreateButton call, where you're setting up the standard PayPal variables for the button, add the CUSTOM parameter. Within that you can pass any value you want (up to 256 char.) and then that same value will come back in the IPN so you can relate it accordingly.
If you have a specific Order ID you could use the INVOICE field instead, and that would come back in IPN as well.
I recently converted from basic Paypal payments to Chained Payments...and I have a few questions if you guys would be so kind to help out.
First, when I setup a PayRequest, I also create an order record in the database. Previously with my basic Paypal implementation, I passed that OrderId in the custom field as part of the form post to Paypal. I would then get that OrderId back in the IPN handler and use it to mark the order as paid or whatever based on the response from Paypal IPN.
Now I am wondering what is a good unique value for my locally created order? Should I use the paykey to look up the order on the IPN callback? Or should I just set the trackingId property of the PayRequest to be the order id and pick up in the IPN callback Request object?
Secondly, there is a returnUrl and ipnNotificationUrl for the PayRequest. Should the returnUrl process the IPN callback or does the ipnNotificationUrl only should do that?
The reason why I ask is because the return url must be able to show the buyer the status of their payment and the transaction info, the same data that I get in the IPN callback.
Thanks for the input guys, once I get these two minor details ironed out, I'll be good to go!
I would add your record ID into the tracking ID parameter of the Pay request like you mentioned. That way you'll get it back in your IPN similar to what you're doing with the custom parameter now.
The IPN notification URL is what you want to set in order to trigger IPNs for the Pay request. You do not want to use the same URL for return because then the script would actually run twice.
I am working on a Paypal IPN script for notifications.
When creating subcriptions through Paypal, is the 'custom' field returned with each IPN response? eg. when a recurring payment is made.
Yes it is.
Once you verify the IPN, (well actually before as well but always verify first...) the name value pair collection you get will contain all fields that have data, including the "custom" field.
For reference this shows all possible values in a subscriptin IPN
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/acc/ipn-subscriptions-outside
I'm trying to using paypal as payment for my site.
My site only sell a virtual currency, like "Diamond" in Online game.
So after reading i starting to use Express Checkout for Digital Goods, Is that right ? or i must other payment method ?
Then my question is when using Express Checkout for Digital Goods, how to pass custom variable ?
Let say i want to pay user_id, diamond_id, and some other variable from my database to the paypal api. It seem like paypal don't support custom variable to pass on the api call. I want after user complete the payment, then Paypal notify my server that the payment is complete by user_id and some other variable that i pass, so easy for me to know the detail.
after searching i find some solution,
First solution is to store "TOKEN"(Generated from "SetExpressCheckout" Method) and my custom variable which is belong to the TOKEN in the database, Then after payment complete paypal will notify my server the same TOKEN saved before. So i will query based on the TOKEN.
Second Solution is using get style in RETURNURL variable http://www.mysite.com/successpayment.php?user_id=13&diamond_id=88 So i will easy to grab the GET variable.
Which solution is right ? Is there any solution ? and how to secure the payment confirmation, i mean if someone know and hack my returnurl.
Thanks in advance
There are two parts to be able to successfully identify your order in the whole process:
To identify your order when the user is redirected back via the success or cancel URL, just pass the order id via the query string of the URL.
To identify your order when Paypal sends notifications about the transaction and associated events (refunds, reversals, disputes etc.) via IPN: Paypal does support a pass-through variable, which allows you to associate IPNs to the order record in your DB.
For express checkout you set PAYMENTREQUEST_0_INVNUM in the SetExpressCheckout call
In case you are creating a recurring profile, the parameter is named PROFILEREFERENCE in the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile call
When you receive an IPN the invoice is passed as 'invoice' or 'rp_invoice_id' respectively
(My general advice, though: use Paypal only if you really have to)
I'm setting up a payment engine for a custom framework using PayPal Express Checkout. One of the business requirements is adding support for recurring payments. I've found documentation on how to implement this at https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECRecurringPayments
The thing I don't quite understand is how to retrieve the value of BillingType from the API after I've set it via SetExpressCheckout to "RecurringPayments". It doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the response data I get back from neither GetExpressCheckoutDetails nor DoExpressCheckoutPayment. I need this to know whether I need to create a recurring payments profile or not. So as far as I can tell my only option is to store the value of BillingType in my database and query it again after DoExpressCheckoutPayment. This works for me but I find it odd that this data would not be returned at all by the API. Am I missing something? Or is there another way of correctly implementing recurring payments?
Not all data you send in a request is returned in a response. You already have what you're passing to them...there's really no need for them to pass it back.
You could use session variables to save the data instead of the database, or you could log all of your API requests and refer to those logs when you need to see what you sent, but again, your application is what's telling PayPal whether or not the payment should include billing agreement information...not the other way around.