PayPal IPN and Subscription

Hi Jason, as ecart currently doesnt feature PayPal subscription and its something that I would prefer to add rather then having the member going through the paypal process each billing cycle.

as stated before, I will be using eCart for the main products for sale for members only. And members will also be required to pay a monthly membership charge that will be reoccuring payments. (so the use of PayPal Subscription would be used here instead of ecart).

My question is, setting up the PayPal subscription button will obviously post to PayPal the details on the form (which i also plan to turn into dynamic bindings so i can allow client to change subscription pricing if they want). And obviously once PayPal approves the payment it would go to a success page where I can send an email etc...but What I need to know is how would I update the users accoutn with the subscription price and months chosen (that were previously sent to PayPal). Since the PayPal suvscriptions form uses an action="" that sends directly to PayPal on submit I cant even create session variables of the form data (the hidden elements) since in the bindings panel it just shows the form name and none of the form elements...so i am guessing I need to code it a different way using PayPal IPN...however im a little clueless with this approach as before i relied on ecart with my previous ecommerce website.

Chris

your paypal account would need to be set up to post to an IPN page.

on the IPN page, go to the bindings panel and click the plus button, select eCart -> Checkout -> Checkout Form response

from the gateway list, select paypal IPN Subscription. This will give a bindings group that can be used to get info from the IPN post.

on the IPN Page, you would then have to set up an update record to update the users account based on success or failure of the transaction.


if you need help configuring this, we can help in a premiere support appointment.

ipn

Thanks for that Jason, would i still be using PayPal Subscriptions button from the WebAssist free tools as I noticed that in Dreamweaver its under PayPal Standard menu. And it only requires a paypal email rather then API credentials.

If this is NOT the way to do it then the only way I can see is use the ecart extension manually then making sure that the form code has: <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions" /> ....would this be the direction?

Chris

I believe either would work. the reality is that subscriptions are not supported directly, and will take custom coding to accomplish.

Thats understandable Jason, Im just wondering the approach to take as since I have already built an ecommerce website, I am wondering if the answer to this project is under my nose in terms in terms what I have build before except for a slight modification in code rather then a completely different direction :)

Whats interesting is that I am getting more of a grasp on PayPal and actually knowing about several approaches to the same task helps with understanding how PHP works in more detail :)

Chris

Jason just experimenting and looking at the individual eCart behaviours. I noticed one called "eCart Get Contents From Form" would I be using this in conjunction with the PayPal Subscriptions button or is it something that can only be used for the eCart checkout process rather then the standalone paypal subscriptions button?

Chris

that behavior allows you to pass the contents of the cart object from one server to another. it wont be used in conjunction with the paypal buttons.

Organising a training session with Ray regarding what I needed with including a subscription option in eCart using PayPal Express...its a good learning curve though finding out about the individual ecart server behaviours and different binding options as it is allowing me a greater understanding...Jason in the meantime do you mind if I still ask on here a few questions relating to the individual server behaviours and their interactions while I experiment?

Chris

that's fine.