Somes questions about eCart

Hi Jason,

I'm still unable to get a fully working eCart.
1) Universal Email is installed but the step for Email Receipt doesn't appears in the wizard.
2) After payment in the Paypal page and the successful Paypal message, nothing more. The checkout_success.php page is not displayed. So the orders are not deleted in the cart, but the order is well recorded in the DB.
3) The order is recorded in the DB before payment. I think it should be better to record it AFTER payment or set a flag if the order is really paid ?
4) I would like to calculate myself the shipping costs based on the country, so I need to record it in the confirm.php page. May you explain me in which line of code I should set my shipping cost ?

Thanks for help,
Daniel

Are you using Paypal Standards or Paypal Pro? as Paypal Standards wont show an email receipt if your using the wizard. Mainly due to the fact that the confirm.php page is posting to paypal on that page.

Im sure you could put an email receipt on page load trigger. since the email could be an "order in progress email".

Hi,

I'm using Paypal Standards.
Well, I could send emails and update the DB from the checkout_success page but at this time this page is not loaded after paypal payment, so I'm puzzled.

Thanks, Daniel

1) Using a remote checkout method like paypal payments standard, you wont have the option to use universal email to send the email receipt in the wizard.

2) on the confirm page, look for a hidden form element named "return" and make sure the value is a full URL to the checkout success page

<input type="hidden" name="return" id="return" value="http://www.mydomain.com/checkout_sucess.php" />

3) This is a limitation to the way paypal standard works. see this thread for a description of the flow of paypal standard, it should explain why the order information is stored before going to paypal:
showpost.php?p=73977&postcount=4

the same IPN page that would be used to update the status of the order would be used to send the email, see this post as well:
showthread.php?p=97452


4)the shipping country is stored in a session variable named "eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country" you can configure the shipping rule to trigger on the value of that session.

Hi Jason,

2) Ok thanks. Now a "return to the shop" button is available in Paypal. Of course if the customer don't click this button, the DB will never be updated and emails not sent…
Do you know if with Paypal PRO the checkout_success.php page is opened automatically after payment ?
Is Paypal Express a Paypal PRO or Standards (in the Wizard) ?

3) My next work ;-)

4) OK now. Some previous forum threads were very helpfull for this.

Thanks, Daniel

2) The checkout success page should be relied on to update the order information or send the email, for that you would need to use an IPN page.


IPN is the system that paypal uses to send the results of the transaction to your site.


the issue is this:

PayPal standard is not a real time system, once the user gets to the checkout success, that does not mean that the transaction has been processed successfully. it only means the payment method was accepted andthe transaction was placed in queu.

once the transaction is processed through the merchant bank, Paypal will send an IPN Post to a page you configure on your site. this should be used for sending the email and setting the status of the order.

Paypal Pro is a real time payment method, the checkout success page will load automatically and the transaction will have already been processed. Express Checkout is a part of payments pro.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your help.

Is the cart emptied automatically in the checkout_success.php page ?

All the best, Daniel

Hi again Jason,

Another question about 2) :
Ok I get the IPN page ( I did a copy of checkout_success.php page for this use) but how to get the OrderID in the orders table ? I need it to get a RecordSet and set this order to "Paid" in a "paypal" field.
In the variables list, I can get the ID of products (<?php echo $eCart1->DisplayInfo("ID"); ?>) but I don't find the OrderID. Is it possible ?

Thanks, Daniel

first off, the IPN page is not a page your customer will ever visit. Paypal will send a post to this page behind the scenes.

I recommend seeing this page for details and sample code.
ipn

when setting up the IPN page, open the bindings panel, click the plus button and select eCart -> Checkout -> Checkout Form Response. from the gateway selection list, select Paypal IPN Cart. this will add bindings fro the IPN post to your bindings panel to use.