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Can't get email and PayPal to work at same time

westendweb 25 May, 2012
Hi - Thanks for your advice on using Chronoforms 4. I've installed it and have been working with it for several days now. I'm learning a lot, but apparently, not enough.

Either I can get the form to go to PayPal correctly using my own code, but it won't send an email to me, OR I can get it to send an email to me and go to PayPal but without the amount or the item name indicated.

Here is a link to the page in question http://www.westonlibrary.org/index.php?option=com_chronoforms&chronoform=fwpl_form. This one has my code, and does what I want it to do on PayPal.

Any help you can give me in setting up Chronoforms to do what my code does, plus send me an email would be most appreciated!

And yes, I did use the Wizard to set up the emails - I've done it successfully before, and can't see if I've made an error this time. But I'm thinking it has something to do with using a custom script that is stopping the emails from being generated.

M
E
GreyHead 25 May, 2012
Hi westendweb,

The form you linked to has the Submit URL set to PayPal, it will submit directly to PayPal, ChronoForms will never see the submitted values and so can't send an email or do anything else.

If you want to use the ChronoForms On Submit actions then you need to keep the ChronoForms submit URL and do the Resirection to PayPal after ChronoForms has processed the results. You can do this with the Redirect URL + Redirect user actions (or with the more complex Payment Gateway actions if you need them).

Bob
westendweb 29 May, 2012
Sorry for the delay - was away all this last HOT weekend, and am just now recovering in air-conditioned splendor.

Here's the problem - I can use Chronoforms as is and make it almost work. If I use my code, as you noted, there is no email generated. But if I use the Chronoforms PayPal widget, while it sends the email, it does not send all the appropriate information to PayPal.

Perhaps the problem is that I'm not giving Chronoforms the appropriate place to look for the field "amount". Any advice on getting the "amount" right? I'm using a set of radio buttons (choose if you want to donate $50, $100 or whatever), and was trying to load the correct value into a field named "TOTAL_AMOUNT", then telling Chronoforms to find the "amount" to send to PayPal there.

It's not working. Is there a more direct way to use Chronoforms to set up an amount? I'm thinking it shouldn't be different from choosing which item you want to buy.
westendweb 04 Jun, 2012
Hi Bob - Thanks for your answer to m.merrywest and CharlesHershey on the PayPal plugin (in "bugs"). It sure would have been nice to know that before I spent 4 or 5 days trying to make it work and then hired a programmer to help me! Even now, I'm not really clear about what I need to do, and I'm about to be fired for this portion of the work. (I promised my client I could do this, because I was able to do it in Version 3, and Version 4 is better, right?)

Okay, I don't mind paying to make the plugin work, but I would like to have been told that up front. I know it says "trial" but I assumed you meant something like "beta" and that you wanted us to let you know how it went so you could make it better or something.

Silly me, but I did try to get help when nothing I did seemed to work correctly. I was just told to use the PayPal redirect. I tried that and never got it to work, of course, because I was getting random results and figured I was doing something wrong, and I didn't want to keep hounding you, one 24-hour email cycle after another, so I hired a programmer (I'm a web designer). When we discovered that Chronoforms needed to be validated, I validated it. It still didn't work.

If I still have the job, and if my client has the ProPayPal API, I can buy the plugin and maybe make it work. Wish me luck.

I think a tutorial might be in order, or at least a web page redesign! I know transitions are hard, and this jump in Joomla is a fairly rocky one, so we need extra help. I have so enjoyed working with you in the past I should be sad if this doesn't work out.

I'll post this over on bugs too.

M
E
GreyHead 06 Jun, 2012
Hi westendweb,

Sorry for the hassle, I have no control over what Max puts into the ChronoForms releases, personally I think there should be a note on the action Help tab. He has added 'Trial' to the name which gives you a clue; and there is a note in the ChronoForms article on the Home page, in the actions list here in the forums (and in many posts here), and I've just added a FAQ to the new FAQ list.

I think that I probably suggested that you use the ReDirect URL and ReDirect User actions - they are both free and do not randomise the amount. They work perfectly well with simple PayPal payments.

Bob
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