Problem with PayPal - order is charged, but order is not generated?

[elyptic]

Hi, we are having a problem with PayPal where the order is processed, the money is submitted to the account, but no record is generated for the purchase! This has happened now with two orders; money is submitted to the account after the order, but when we go to Manage Orders, there is no record for the purchase.

This does not happen with VISA or MasterCard orders. We are just using the normal PayPal method.

On the PayPal method page, we have Live checked, Auto Return checked, PDT checked, IPN checked, currency code CAD, and Enabled checked.

Please help!

[Jamie]

The most likely cause for that is having IPN not configured properly. I'd recommend reading through our documentation for setting up PayPal standard, and making sure everything was setup correctly.

http://squirrelcart.com/help/?PayPal...0Standard.html

If your server doesn't meet the requirements for the features you have enabled, you will also have problems.

[elyptic]

Hi Jamie thanks for your response. After looking into my PayPal account, for both Auto Return and IPN there are necessary URLs that need to be entered but I don't see it in the documentation. I've turned everything off in the interim, but how would I go about enabling these without knowing which URLs are necessary?

[Jamie]

Auto Return never used to require a URL, but it does now. Enter your Squirrelcart storefront page URL for that. For IPN, see step #6 under Instant Payment Notification Setup on the page I linked to in my last reply.

[elyptic]

OK Jamie I'll try that. Does the storefront page provide all that PayPal requires, i.e.

# Per the user agreement, you must provide verbiage on the page displayed by the Return URL that will help the buyer understand that the payment has been made and that the transaction has been completed.
# You must provide verbiage on the page displayed by the Return URL that explains that payment transaction details will be emailed to the buyer.

I'll also try to find out how to get a token.

[Jamie]

The template that controls the thank you page is thanks_for_order.tpl.php. You can add anything you like to it. They will see a thank you page indicating their order is complete. I don't believe it's going to tell them they are going to receive an email.

[elyptic]

Thanks for your help Jamie, I've set things up the way they seem they should work. Is there an official test path to trying out PayPal checkouts that you know of? Like a test email account etc?

[Jamie]

The easiest way to test is is to create an item for $.01 and purchase it via PayPal.

[bbuchan]

Hi

I've just had this problem after not realising paypal had to be setup seperately - I've managed to sorted it and new orders are coming through properly, but I've still got 1 payment with no attached order

Is there anyway to find out what the order actually was from the database somewhere, without going to the customer to ask them?

Ben

[ScottW]

Are you not seeing the order in the control panel via orders/manage?

[bbuchan]

Are you not seeing the order in the control panel via orders/manage?

Nope, not there at all. Got a paypal receipt for an order #443, but that doesn't exist in the control panel

I've been brave (got some experience in the area) and looked in the database and can see the details for the order all encoded in one of the 'temporary' tables, it just looks like it hasn't been finalized into an actual order. The reason for that I don't know

[Jamie]

If the order was not completed, there is no way to obtain the information for it.

[ScottW]

If you are referring to the TEMP_Session table, then you should take snapshot of that asap - that table is just used for temporary shopping cart storage, and as soon as it expires, it will get removed.

Normally I would expect to find an order in the 'Orders' table - the 443 is probably the record number in that table. All of the items within that order would be located in the 'Ordered_Items' table - using sql, you can do a

select * from 'Ordered_Items' where Order_rn = 443

If any of your items have options, you'll find the options in the 'Ordered_Options' table - note the record number from the particular item, then do a:

select * from 'Ordered_Options' where Ordered_Items_rn = <item record number>

Another thing you could try, would be if you can find the order in the 'Orders' table, change the Payment_Status field value to 'Completed' (note the current value so you can change it back if needed) - and then see if it shows up in the control panel.

[ScottW]

If the order was not completed, there is no way to obtain the information for it.

Wow. I just looked, and that's really the case. I'd call that a pretty serious bug, since it seems like there might be any number of reasons that IPN might break (inadvertent mis-configuration being the most common).

Ok, you may be able to recover this order. First, back up your database tables.

If I was using SC3, I'd create a content page and a link to that page (but I wouldn't publish the link). Note the record number of the link. Then within the content page I'd embed the following PHP code:

$invoice = #; // Where # is the Order_Number taken from the TEMP_Sessions record
$pending_order = get_field_val('TEMP_Sessions','Cart_Contents',"Order_Number = '$invoice'");
$SC['order'] = get_magic_quotes_runtime() ? unserialize(stripslashes($pending_order)) : unserialize($pending_order);
sc_complete_order(0,0,'Completed');

Then I'd access the page once, and only once by using the record number of the link, via

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?sc_page=<link record #>

if everything goes well, you should end up with the order showing up in the order database. You can then use SQL to delete the record from the TEMP_Sessions table.

[Jamie]

Wow. I just looked, and that's really the case. I'd call that a pretty serious bug

We will most likely be adding support for storing orders in the future even when they are not submitted. That will allow a merchant to see all pending orders that have not completed.

However, calling the lack of a fallback feature like this a bug when the problem is due to a misconfiguration is a stretch.