You have finally decided IPN is the solution to your website application. you don't want to pay someone else to do it. It can't be that hard, can it? Where can you get some practical advice from people who have been there, done that. this page will answer these questions and help you decide if you are able to write that code. If you find it too complicated there are a few commercial products out there that will handle everything for you so don't fail heart if you find yourself stuck.
PayPal IPN
Instant Payment Notification is better known as PayPal IPN and is PayPal's interface for handling real time confirmation of purchases. A typical use for IPN is where you want a client to pay for a applications download.
PayPal provide 3 different varieties of account. Personal, most powerful and Business. You will need definitive or Business to use IPN.
Listener
PayPal IPN messages are not synchronized with actions on your web presence. You detect IPN messages from PayPal with a piece of code known as a listener.
You specify the URL of your listener in your PayPal account's profile but you can override this for specific transactions when you setup a button or API operation. You can also temporarily turn off the sending of IPN messages, useful if your web page is down for maintenance. they are still generated and stored until you switch sending back on again.
You should perform a number of checks on the IPN message received from PayPal.
Check the email address to be sure it's yours
Check that you have not already processed the transaction identified by the transaction ID
Make sure that the transaction's payment status is ""completed""
Verify that the payment amount actually matches what you intend to charge
PayPal Sandbox
when you are developing your site you really don't need to be trying to get it working by experimenting on a real money system. Any early bugs in the systems could leave security holes but even if you write perfect code it is best not to do your testing using real money.
PayPal provides what they call a sandbox, nearly identical to the live PayPal system. You can setup fake business partners with fake money and make as many test purchases as you want. the appropriiate systems to completely test your web application.
there is a Sandbox Forum on the developer network. it's a super place for advice.
Testing your Listener
The Sandbox has an great IPN Simulator (under Test Tools) which lets you choose the transaction type, fill in all the parameter values and send a test IPN to a specified address.
IPN History
PayPal provides an IPN history page under the My Account tab. Click on History to see it. It includes everything you need to know about each IPN message including the following Status values.
Sent: indicates that PayPal sent the message to your IPN listener
Failed: indicates that PayPal did not receive an acknowledgement to the message
Queued: indicates that PayPal is ready to send the message
Retrying: indicates that message was resent between 1 and 15 times and PayPal continues to be resend the message
Disabled: indicates that the message will not be resent because the merchant's account has been disabled
Conclusion
the best place to search for information is the http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks/ PayPal Integration Centre which has guides, code and links for everything to do with integrating your web portal with PayPal.
The one place you should visit is the http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks/ PayPal IPN Forum on the developer web site. as well as a constantly changing list of discussion topics about IPN, there are some good sticky posts about troubleshooting tips, IPN variables, pre constructed base model code etc.
PayPal IPN is a difficult subject but the combination of an fantastic testing environment in the form of the sandbox and the good quality advice provided through the forums should make it possible for you to get
To review these tools visit:
http://visitwebpages.info/paypalchecks/
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