PayPal integration. My Solution

Hi, I am building a website where we sell courses, I manage courses with Eventlist and registration to courses with Chronoforms.
I have set up a form in which variables like code, title, dates, price and city of the course are loaded thru php (basically I pass the code of the course to the chronoform and it reads all details form the database)

The user fills in a form with its details, which are sent by email.
After the email has been sent (using the "On Submit code - after sending email") I create the paypal button dinamically for the course to which the user has registered.

something like:

Your registration to Course <?php echo $_POST["CourseCode"];?> Has been received.
<br/>
<br/><br/>

You can complete your transaction with PayPal: <br /> 
<br /> 

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="example@example.com">
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Course: <?php echo $_POST["CourseCode"]; ?> - Dates: <?php echo $_POST["Dates"]; ?> - City: <?php echo $_POST["City"]; ?>">
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="<?php echo $_POST["Price"]; ?>">
<input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="0.00">
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="0">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="EUR">
<input type="hidden" name="lc" value="IT">
<input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-BuyNowBF">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynow_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>

Is this the right approach? Could the PayPal form be hacked in some way to hijack funds???

Hi autodafe,

This is a very common way of creating PayPal forms - it does have some security risks. You could build the form in php and do a url redirect or a curl post from there which makes less information public. Or you could check out PayPal's notes on encryption.

Bob

Bob, et al.--

For novice like me that would like to integrate payment (PayPal) solution into my forms and have comfort of relative security, can you please detail the method you're suggesting for doing this (building form in PHP and doing a redirect and/or curl) or you can direct me to an online tutorial to do this.

Thx for your excellent posts, I have learned quite a bit since joining.

Hi obisi,

it depends on the scenario you want to happen, how do you want things to work in your form ? there are many things you may care for or may care for some of them only (paypal, mail, storing data...etc)

Max

Max--

Thx for your quick response. All I want to do is for a user after filling the registration form (created using dreamweaver and chronoforms) to pay for the sponsorship selected.
Since this is a single amount, I thought I could use the standard code provided by Paypal and slightly modified in this posting. However, though I get the form results by email and I pasted the modified code into the Onsubmit after sending email, my form for the paypal portion did not display.

Please checkout my form at senatorybmiller.com and select the Golf register menu item of click the graphic announcement.

Thx

Hi Obisi,

please show me the code you got from PayPal and I will tell you where to put it and if it needs editing

Max

Max--

Below is the code from PayPal which is similar to the code provided in this thread. I have substituted my form variables where needed. This code is pasted into the Onubmit ... after email sending.
------------------
Your registration Yvonne Miller Golf Tournament has been received.
<br/>
<br/><br/>

Please complete your registration by making payment at PayPal: <br />
<br />

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="senatorybmiller@verizon.net">
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Lastname: <?php echo $_POST["lname"]; ?> - First Name: <?php echo $_POST["fname"]; ?> - Company: <?php echo $_POST["company"]; ?>">
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="<?php echo $_POST["amount"]; ?>">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynow_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>

Great, thats how it should be, is it working fine now ?

I suggest you replace all

$_POST["somefield"]

with

JRequest::getVar("somefield")

if you have J1.5

Max

I am using J1.0.15. It is still not working in that no form is displayed for the payment. I do get the results of the form by email but nothing happens to do the paypal part.

Could you try and fill out the fgolf registration orm on my website: senatorybmiller.com to see what I am talking about. I appreciate it greatly as I am baffled that it is not working when the coding looks ok.

thx

it looks like you have enabled image verification but didn't add one, it will not let me pass!! do u have CF 2.3.9 ? try to add simple text in the onsubmit and see if it works well ?

I am sorry on the image validation which I included to fight spam. I've disabled image validation. Please try again. My url is: senatorybmiller.com and the form to fill out is the golf registration.

thx Max for assisting.

do you have a redirect URL ?

yes I do; it is back to my home page index.pp. should this be removed?

that was the issue. Problem solved as soon as I removed the redirect. Is there a way to redirect user back to my homepage after completing the paypal payment? Will that have to be done in the paypal end?

thx

Hi obisi, I think there is some variable you pass to PayPal which will take users then back to some special URL at your website ?

Obisi,
I need to do exactly what you have been doing. We also sell courses and I am using Eventlist to build the courses and I need to develop a form to read the details of the course from the Eventlist into the form and then use the paypal for paying the fee. It will save me a lot of time if you could possibly share your form with me.
Fred

Hi Fred,

If you search the forums here for PayPal you will find a few postings that include the code you need (unless you need IPN in which case there are some hints but no full solution).

Bob

This is an interesting thread as I have been looking at ways of embedding a Paypal system into one of my sites so that it signals automatically when the cart is empty.

Hi Anglesey,

If you want to control a cart inside Joomla I suggets you take a look at Simple Caddy.

Bob

Been looking to do exactly what the OP had intended - but was pulling my hair out until i stumbled across Simple Caddy (Thanks GreyHead!)

Here's the link in case anyone else needs it:

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/e-commerce/shopping-cart/4148