Updating a record when landing on a page

I'm used to the normal way of updating a record when a form is submitted, but have a requirement to update a record simply by landing on a page.

The context is basically updating a 'paid' field to yes if a payment on PayPal has been successful.

So the idea is that people click to make a payment for a property, which is listed in a table of properties, and includes a field 'paid'. They go to the Paypal site, and if the payment is successful they are returned to a 'success' page.

And the action of arriving on that success page is enough to update 'paid' to 'yes'.

Is there any way something like this could easily be achieved?

I'm not sure it would be and that it would need some sort of workaround eg a simple form with a button to continue, which would update the field.

Which would work, but only if people actually did click on the button.

Hope that makes sense, thanks.

What paypal system are you using? it would sound like you are using paypal standard.

what you propose has a number of flaws:
what is to stop a person from simply going to the checkout success page and triggering the update?

with paypal standard you would set up an IPN page to do the update. when the transaction is processed, paypal will make an ipn post to a [page you set up, on the IPN page, you can do the update. see here for more details on IPN:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/ipn/integration-guide/IPNIntro/

instead of using paypal standard and IPN, I would suggest using Express Checkout, it is a real time payment method, it is also free like Paypal Express and gives the same checkout experience.

Unlike payments standard, the order insert can happen on successful transaction so there is no need for an update.

Thanks Jason - I will have a look at that. I agree about the flaws, but the client wants to automate as much of a process as possible. At the moment people have the choice of requesting an invoice, or going to Paypal to pay. Its a very simple set up just using a Paypal button rather than any cart to speak of.

on the surface it may seem simple, but you will find that the lifting you need to do from the development side is not so simple.

it would be much simpler to use paypal express.

Hi Jason - sorry - I didn't mean to suggest this was simple to implement. I just meant that the current set up is just a simple Paypal button.

The client sent me a link for Actinec to look at. At the moment they only sell the odd subscription, but are at the stage where they might be considering some sort of cart, in which case I may end up dusting down my eCart extension.